


Lizbob Supernatural Watching Notes (season 9)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Watching Notes [9]
Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 00:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 239,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16863076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: There's 2 of these dated a couple of years apart - I did re-read the first one before doing the second so I think there's not TOO much overlap. Anyway they're both here.





	1. 9x01

Or: welcome to my irrational attachment to season 9 <3

* * *

Brb I need to go grab that big bag of spinach out of the fridge so I can get some salad to laugh with about “WHO DO YOU LOVE” 

first said when you see THIS:

that is 37 seconds into the montage after a lot of beheadings, and Cas featured mostly being shot in the stomach facelessly, with a focus on Sam and then trials instead, to what is mostly the bass track and almost inaudible lyrics to my ears. Then WHO DO YOU LOVE and bam we’re at Destiel o’clock, and see Cas’s face for the first time that moment.

I forgot it was this season that opened with this. So here’s the summary of season 8 for us, and I guess it would be wrong to NOT sum it up like that :P

We get a recap of the crypt scene, Cas dropped in front of the Impala to be saved by them, and then a switch to Crowley on the next “who do you love” which is less about last season and more now about the love triangle for this season. Cas was established as the desired GOOD end goal for Dean last season, now Crowley muscles in and takes his place opposite and drags Dean to the Worst Possible Place. 

(Say whatever else you want about it but the love triangles are pretty tight storytelling in Carver era…)

* * *

Anyway that refrain keeps on going over a recap of 8x23 so I think it loses its shock value after a little while and the main oomph of it is that first time you hear it over Dean n Cas. Sort of a “river ends at the source” for “he’s in love…..” at the end of the season, as it sneakily answers the question. Most of it plays over shots of Cas rather than over Dean, and again while season 8 in general is clearly trying to show us Dean is in love with Cas, the last couple of episodes switch focus to trying to get Cas’s attention, the universe waving wildly at him like “HEY YOU DON’T KNOW IT BUT YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH DEAN” so I think as well as the Crowley stuff giving us the love triangle, along with the answer at the end of the season, this song is sort of also for Cas and his arc this season

Rather amused that the “WHO DO YOU LOVE”s stop before we get to any of the Sam n Dean stuff from the end of last episode. 

We know Sam and Dean love each other, that isn’t in question, and is rather more the problem, 8x23 onwards. 

* * *

> SAM   
> This makes no sense. 

Always love when the opening lines speak to the whole season ;)

* * *

> DEAN   
> Angels aren’t our problem right now, okay? Or demons, or Metatron, or whatever the hell happened to Cas.

This is Sam’s brain’s conjuration of Dean, so it’s interesting to look closer at this. I feel like Sam’s subconscious affects a great deal more of this season than the surface layer lets on, for good or bad (which I will get into at the key moments).

“Dean” rattles off the 3 big bads of the season – and then throws in a mention of Cas. Sam has some peripheral awareness of what’s going on outside of him (which possibly affects his mental journey this episode considering Gadreel and Dean argue over his bedside for a chunk of the episode) since he cites the meteor shower thing and is finding time to be sassy about the mistaken belief FROM HIS COMA (dang I love Sam – I think only googling from death’s door in 11x02 tops examples of this particular Sam trait :P). I’m not sure how aware of all the drama with Cas he was as Cas disappeared before Dean went into the church and so Sam would be only dimly aware Dean was yelling for Cas. In a way he might miss all the politics of it (all the “ET goes home” and so on stuff Dean was upset about last episode) and by that point only be understanding it as “Angels fall, Dean is upset about Cas a separate problem and the only one dramatic enough to be worth mentioning in the same thought as these other things”

At least as far as his anxiety from last episode, I think Dean’s words were powerful enough to smooth over a good deal of his hurt in the immediate moment, since the point was he talked Sam down from sacrificing himself and convinced him he was loved and trusted enough not to need to do that. I’m not sure this is directly addressed again – maybe disappearing into the shorthand they use to reference events, such as “should have looked for me in purgatory” or whatever. But I don’t think, obviously, Sam is magically healed of this deep anxiety as his self-worth has been an issue a long time (“I’m the least of any of you” or something back at the end of season 5?) and the situation of the Benny stuff from his POV was manufactured to hit a raw nerve. So it’s interesting to me that Sam has this version of Dean list his concern for Cas along with 3 objective terrible events/bad characters – the quiet awareness Sam has that Dean prioritises and worries about Cas, and even if he’s been freshly reassured that doesn’t overlap with Dean’s care for Sam, it still worries him.

On the other side of the veil or whatever, we have Dean worrying at Sam’s bedside, but casting a glance over at the TV screen, which on the surface layer explains how Sam knows about the explanation of it as a meteor storm in order to snark about it, but also shows Dean’s conflict here: he IS worried about Cas but he can’t and won’t leave Sam’s side at a time like this, and the bigger problems of the world are just going to have to wait. Dean is a helpless observer to all that but the burden still weighs on him and worrying about Sam is anchoring him to the spot and leaving him unable to help.

(Which I think is a tiny moment quite nicely mirrored by the end of 9x06 with Cas watching a similar report about the still-unexplained meteor event and looking helpless, feeling the same, but then taking it as his call to action again, while of course Dean is spiralling downwards, possibly because if these moments were both a moment of choice, Dean doesn’t move to help on the main arc stuff here, although of course he and Cas are both motivated to help their family…)

* * *

I wonder how the doctor understands the idea of Sam suffering all this random internal burning… I mean I’m not super well-versed on medical stuff but I don’t think there’s an illness that looks like this??

* * *

(Pls don’t tell me if there is)

* * *

> DOCTOR   
> I’m afraid that’s in God’s hands now.
> 
> DEAN   
> You’re a doctor. You’re a medical professional. You’re trying to tell me that my brother’s life is in God’s hands? What, is that supposed to be a – a comfort?
> 
> DEAN   
> No, God has nothing to do with this equation at all.

Eeey hands of God. I mean not like Sam has just nearly  _exploded_  from having God’s power in him in the same way those things killed Delphine or anything… Naaah God is in the equation, he’s just the force they’re fighting AGAINST

* * *

Anyway that reminds Dean that there is a higher power he believes in…

“Cas, are you there…?”

* * *

This prayer both calls back to 8x16 in tone, complete with the “all about dying Sammy then some personal DeanCas crap followed by a look over the shoulder” and has an air of 4x22’s lost phone message of forgiveness though of course Cas just gets nothing, until their call later. And of course is our last canonical prayer to Cas, which is terrible that this was 3 years ago. >.>

> DEAN   
> Cas, are you there? Sammy’s hurt. He’s hurt, uh – he’s hurt pretty bad. And, um… I know you think that I’m pissed at you, okay? But I don’t care that the angels fell. So whatever you did or didn’t do, it doesn’t matter, okay? We’ll work it out. Please, man, I need you here.

I think Sam dying along with having had to make a really terrible goodbye to Cas where he didn’t get to say everything he wanted to say kinda gets Dean to the “I’m not mad at you” apology, which again I think covers more than just the immediate moment, but stretches back into what he should have said after “ET goes home” just to begin to address the baggage they were carrying

…that one time they may have been able to discuss the crypt scene and related drama naturally, e.g. letting Cas bring up the 1000s of dead Deans, probably was in 8x23 if that conversation had run smoothly, as it was the Thing between them at that point. Now the angel fall is, and shortly, human!Cas, and then on from there 9x03 and all that nonsense, so… Not much hope any more that they’d even feel it was something still relevant to work through (and Dean is much better at letting Cas off the hook for stuff than he is with Sam, perhaps because their cumulative baggage is still a fraction of his and Sam’s, and he genuinely forgave Cas for season 6 so not much can stack up like that :P)

Anyway the “I need you here” is our last little bridge to the season 8 stuff (see also: “Who do you love”) and explains that Dean would be getting more than help with Sam if Cas showed up by the change in tone when he recalibrates and sends out the 2nd mass-message in as many episodes.

… In the long run Crowley’s accidental moment of bringing Abaddon down on him doing the same thing really seems like the least worst incident considering how Dean is beaten up by 3 angels and accepts Gadreel’s help with all the knock-on effects that causes :P And of course book-ending the season with 9x23 and Metatron’s *accidental* broadcast to the Heavenly host, the same peeps getting Dean’s urgent message here. So they hear at the start of the year Dean’s call for help about Sam, and at the end of the year, Metatron’s sneering message about Cas’s care for Dean.

No wonder they always seem super fed up of Cas and the Winchesters :P

* * *

Ah, Dean seems to be under an exit sign in the long shot, at least, hovering to his left. Right before he makes the call that brings Gadreel to him

Gadreel shows up in his beautiful ace pride colours (okay, purple is heavily associated with danger on this show), but also he has magnificent green wings for a moment and it’s really hard to screencap as some bloke walks in front of him when the camera angle and Gadreel are standing in the exact right place, but:

* * *

> DEAN   
> Screw it.

I’m watching him make the worst decision of his life through my fingers tbh

His desperation is pretty obvious to him and obviously he’s working very much in the moment not stopping to contemplate the consequences but working on the actions that will get stuff done (and going wider takes the personal element out of it as Cas would have been able to comfort and balance him as much as offer help if he was still an angel and answered the original call), but I know with hindsight how he comes to regret this and sees in just 10 episodes his actions as “poison” and that he’s caused all that damage because he couldn’t let go. And then of course he takes the Mark which blocks him moving through this healthily, but demon!Dean in 10x03 expresses very clearly the problem he has with Sam, and all of it aggravated in an unrolling series of events from the decisions he makes over the last couple of episodes…

* * *

Anyway Sam over there inside his head is like “yeah I can’t even hear what Dean’s doing but I know what he’d say and be thinking right now.”

I like how he uses the manifestation of Dean to talk him around to accepting/realising he’s in the coma in the first place… Kinda accidentally making “Dean” the voice of facing up to facts even if the fact of Sam dying is one he’s steadfastly refusing out in the real world.

(Sam in the car parts is a really nice version of Sam, laughing and joking about everything… I hate he has to be in a coma and dying to seem happy)

> SAM   
> You’re serious. [exhales] The whole reason I stopped doing the trials was not to die.

I guess this is the problem here: that’s where Sam STARTS the episode but he comes around to accept his death while of course Dean on the outside is still working on where Sam left off last time he was conscious. I guess Gadreel figures out pretty quickly Sam would rather die in the sense of having made his peace (depending on what he listened into when Dean left him alone with Sam), and swears Dean to secrecy over it as there’d be no easy way to break it to Sam when he didn’t want it… 

Rather than Sam being strictly suicidal or having a death wish, maybe we should look at this in comparison to Dean in season 2 who didn’t feel like he should have been brought back and with Tessa had a similar sort of coming to terms with his natural death as Sam did (even if Dean didn’t remember that until season 4, his behaviour in season 2 is clearly influenced by the same feeling). It roughly amounts to the same thing but that sense of guilt and wrongness about being alive, especially at a great cost (John or Kevin’s life respectively) probably causes more damage than anything specifically about  _wanting_ to be dead. With of course the problem Sam was feeling ready to sacrifice his life only a day before  _anyway_ :

> SAM   
> The thing is, if I am dying – and I believe you. I do. But if you’re you but you’re really me and you’re the part of me that wants to fight to live…
> 
> DEAN   
> Yes. I have no idea what you just said, but continue.
> 
> SAM   
> But if you don’t have any idea how I’m supposed to fight, then am I supposed to be fighting at all?

Sam has a point to see “Dean” as a part of himself, and realises Dean’s helplessness in this scenario is really an expression of Sam’s own feelings – if Dean doesn’t know what there is to live for or how to fight back, that’s very subtly showing that Sam’s feelings from last episode are still hanging around, as it is less about a plan to survive and more about the missing… willpower? I guess? That last line quietly representing what Sam is still struggling with, and of course inviting Bobby, the pro “when it’s your time, go” voice to the party. (Back in 8x01, that was one of the lines from season 7 they used in the Road So Far, seeded as a major theme for Carver era but not pulled on properly until now)

* * *

Anyway, smol human!Cas off on his very un-fun nature walk

Surrounded by tall pines, it’s another sort of callback to Purgatory, and 8x07 also drops him on the side of the road with an emphasis on the pines and tall trees to invoke that feeling (also the music choice which I am still laughing about). Lots of repeating motifs (e.g. Cas also began and ended season 8 in the woods as well). Although Dean didn’t nearly mow Cas down on the way like truck dude does :P The Road So Far for THIS episode also reminded us of Cas being dumped in Dean’s path in 8x21 so this is the 3rd time in Carver era Cas has had a similar experience. I guess the lack of being rescued from Purgatory by Dean is emphasised by Dean being unable/unwilling to leave Sam’s side and come help him (that glance at the TV screen to the falling angels, the glance over his shoulder after the prayer, and then recalibrating to snag some other angels instead, putting his needs over the search for Cas)

This bloke also is driving a tan truck (we’re nearly at Cas’s car! Eee!) and is wearing a tan shirt under a blue and black plaid, which contrasts to Cas’s trenchcoat and blue tie almost in reverse of colour proportions/outside vs inside layers. I’m assuming this is important for Cas’s experience of humanity and compassion offered from one human to another. I guess playing up their similarities with this good Samaritan? Now Cas is one of the people who gets help as much as he used to try to help people…

* * *

He also warns Cas about dehydration which is the start of Cas’s OWN arc to accept he’s human like Sam is accepting he’s dying.

“I would fly but I have no wings,” he says, with the trees sort of making dark wings behind him:

* * *

 Also incidentally this scene establishes Cas can still hear angel radio and we remember how much Anna could do while still being a fallen angel (hearing angel radio was basically how we were introduced to her), so there’s a little  _something_  left in him that’s above average for a human, but he never once throws any heavy furniture at anyone attacking him? And he KNEW he used to be an angel. Maybe he was just feeling too helpless and human, while Anna did it all instinctively and intuitively from her subconscious not hampered by the feeling she was useless and human, but it’s always bugged me he didn’t tap into the same thing she did. >.>

* * *

> DEAN  
> Sam wants to die, and you think he’s got a point?
> 
> SAM   
> Okay, I don’t want to die. I asked if maybe I was supposed to –
> 
> DEAN   
> Shut it, Sam. [to BOBBY] You – go. Oh, and, uh, before you throw me under the bus, you’re welcome for the hell rescue.
> 
> BOBBY   
> Hey, first of all, you didn’t rescue jack, half-wit. Sam did. 

Sam’s subconscious letting his version of Dean take credit for his own achievements and then letting Bobby, who seems to be his rational side thanks to all the speeches he’s given whipping them into shape, claim that back. I mean it’s presented as something just like the in-character banter Sam would expect from them, but I think it says a lot that he puts these words in their mouths, especially with his sense of being overshadowed/not worthy in relation to Dean, as letting Bobby claim that back says as much as the fact his figment of Dean does it in the first place.

* * *

> BOBBY   
> Oh, you mean like the way one of you idjits does some “bass-ackwards” crazy thing to beat death, like sell your soul?

Yay non-Bucklemming Bobby that REALLY DOESN’T LIKE HIS BOYS SELLING THEIR SOULS AND SHIT

I still don’t know where his characterisation in 8x19 came from :P

* * *

> SAM   
> Enough! Both of you! I can’t hear myself think!

Uh, this IS you thinking it through, Sam. You just have a weird concept of your own personhood which doesn’t help how many times that’s been fractured and overridden so you appear to think best by letting others represent you, since your own mind tends to try to kill you :P

(At least when Dean shows up and murders Bobby in a tick, for once it ISN’T Sam murdering himself :P)

* * *

> DEAN   
> Well, I’m in the front seat because Sam put me here because he wants to fight. Right?
> 
> BOBBY suddenly appears in the front seat between SAM and DEAN.
> 
> BOBBY   
> Well… that just got real uncomfortable. See ya, Dean.
> 
> BOBBY puts a hand on SAM’s shoulder.
> 
> DEAN   
> Sam, don’t you dare –

Sam and Dean vs the front seat/driver’s seat is kind of a thing? I was just watching 1x20 where Dean lets Sam drive after seeing how snippy he’s getting with John, which I figured at the time was to give him an illusion of control. Then Sam uses that as actual control to spin the car and stop John so they all get out and yell at each other… Dean tends to do most of the driving anyway but it gets pretty oppressive, like back in season 8 where Sam was upset right after finding out about Benny and I think complained at 2 separate instances in Southern Comfort about how Dean wants him to ride shotgun and shut up. So of course it’s significant that Sam is letting Dean drive, aka be the one in control and making the decisions, because of course this episode ends up with Dean making the hugest decision for Sam… Although I think also there’s something to say about force of habit, Sam sticking himself in that seat and LETTING Dean drive, and assuming that’s the natural order and this moment being a sort of wake up to how he’s let it happen…

But here Sam first of all puts Dean and Bobby on a more equal footing, and Bobby, I guess acting as an agent of Sam’s subconscious that wants more control, more rationality, and to escape from Dean’s control entirely, whooshes them right out of the car.

And to go with the Sam and Cas parallels of putting them both on a journey, whooshes them to some very similar piney woodland.

So once again Sam is in a personal mental Purgatory a la 6x22

(I um, haven’t actually looked at him since watching 1x20 literally mid-paragraph as I watched up to this scene and then wandered off then came back and started typing since the internet is down because thunderstorms, and my brain is confused because Sam was wearing the same freaking shirt as 6x22/8x19, I swear to God. Um.

Nah he’s just wearing grey in this episode.

Also buy some new fucking shirts Sam. Every time I see you wearing a shirt you still own in season 11 back in season 1 I cry.)

This completely derailed my thought. Although I guess 1x20 also has him arguing for his agency in a woodland. Who even knows. :P

* * *

Cas gets dropped off at a gas station, as part of his long history with the things (which goes right back to 4x01, and in a way might be the closest mirroring just because he’s the newly made human without a thing to his name in the wilderness and this the first sign of civilisation for him. Of course Dean went right in and dealt with human needs like thirst, while Cas keeps ignoring it.

Also to the 8x07 parallels there’s what appears to be a bear and a pinetree on this sign…

* * *

Hael is lurking in the backseat of her car rather than the driver’s seat… I mean she’s not going anywhere right now but it is interesting coming immediately after the scene where Sam and his figurative family argued about the importance of front seat for decision making. Considering how she’s looking for guidance from Cas as much as wanting to control him…

Also: reminded of the girl in 11x04 who looked so uncannily like Hael I think we collectively as a fandom rushed to IMDB to double-check they were 2 separate people… She finally got to take a joyride, and I guess that’s Casifer foreshadowing, if Robbie left a note like “find the actress who has the most uncanny resemblance to Hael as you possibly can” :P … I wouldn’t put it past him, but even if he didn’t, the stars seem to align on his episodes for  _freakish_  foreshadowing.

* * *

Cas that is not how you talk to people who are on the phone. He’s using his commanding angel voice still. :’) he doesn’t really break it out all that often any more, and learning to ask nicely is I guess good character development but there’s always a part of me that misses old school Cas, and this episode knocks a fair amount of it out of him all by itself.

> YOUNG WOMAN   
> Castiel. We met in Heaven. My name is Hael.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> You’re an angel.
> 
> YOUNG WOMAN   
> Am I? What’s an angel without its wings?

Aaargh. This is turning into one of those age-old rhetorical riddles or whatever as Cas’s arc goes on and on and on crawling through defining this. But this is early days on the “who/what is Cas” arc – they sort of needed the Naomi arc to bring it all to the surface, but Cas only really started it after he broke out of her control – I guess symbolically that giving him the chance to take obvious charge of who gets to define and control Cas. Not that he was thinking much about it but Metatron was pretty helpful all things considered at the end of season 8 on kicking Cas onto this arc. Now he is asked the first direct question – still rhetorically but still it obviously applies to him too – in a long long series of challenges about his identity.

* * *

> KIM   
> I’m afraid, as hard as this may be, this might be a good time to talk… about the inevitable.
> 
> DEAN   
> Look, I’m sure you’re a nice person and that you mean well, but “inevitable” – that’s a fightin’ word where I come from. There’s always a way.

Yeeeah there’s a big difference between old school Dean vs destiny and Dean applying that stop the apocalypse attitude to something they wandered into strictly by free will (Metatron was clear to ask Dean if he was ready for this choice after all) and now he’s struggling with the consequences.

Rather behind on his fictional counterpart in Sam’s head, he finally has the realisation he could just go the old school route and sell his soul to get Sam back, and wanders off to get Crowley’s help, and is only stopped by being jumped by an angel before he can get Crowley out and start making demonic bad decisions a little earlier than scheduled.

It’s pretty telling that the only reason Dean and Sam both don’t start and end the season making deals with Crowley to bring the other back is because other plot stuff gets in the way first.

* * *

The angel that jumps Dean doesn’t even seem to have a real blade of the shiny stuff like the ones Dean n Cas are allowed to flip around. I guess extras who don’t even know you use the pointy bit to threaten people don’t get trusted with the real thing. You could tell Metatron was a keeper because he actually used the knife properly the first time we saw him hold one.

I always laugh when angels press the part of the blade to someone’s throat that Cas casually  _holds_ in his bare hand when he’s fighting.

* * *

To be fair Cas is so fuckin’ metal we have no idea how safe that actually is and I think Dean mostly holds it by the real handle.

* * *

Anyway my favourite pastime is imagining this fight from Crowley’s POV. “watch” this from the perspective of being locked in the trunk:

> The MAN IN A SUIT forces DEAN down against the IMPALA’s trunk.
> 
> MAN IN A SUIT   
> If you lie to me, Dean Winchester, I will rip your throat out. Where is Castiel?
> 
> DEAN   
> Who’s asking?
> 
> MAN IN A SUIT   
> Try every angel who was ejected from their home.
> 
> DEAN   
> Oh. Oh, well, in that case, I have no clue.
> 
> The MAN IN A SUIT slams DEAN against the IMPALA’s trunk twice.

Crowley like “wtf is happening out there and how much does Dean look like he’s enjoying it”

* * *

Oh look it’s my scene stealing angel love of the season:

> TALL MAN   
> Easy there, brother. This young man has prayed for our assistance. Are we creatures of wrath or compassion? I would argue the latter.

He certainly makes a good case to not be evil and about to run off with Sam while murdering their friends so I understand Dean’s mistake. :P

(I’m horrifically sympathetic to Gadreel, probably because 9x18 is the episode that flipped on my meta brain for this show, so I just have to tough out the first half of the season grimly clinging to the chair and shouting “he’s a victim too!” into the void :P Listen if we’re rating characters for making panicky bad decisions that get people killed this season, Gadreel has to take a number with Dean running around and barely getting started yet in the first 10 episodes before he makes the biggest “skip the terms and conditions” mistake in a few millennia, and if DEAN can carry on being one of my faves through all that then I think we can be sympathetic to Gadreel and just blame Metatron or Lucifer for everything :P)

Anyway considering over on the other side of things Hael was asking what angels even were, Gadreel is showing up with nuanced ideas of what they’re  _supposed_ to be, and I guess remembering that he set himself up as wrath vs compassion is a good way to look at the way his arc goes, as Metatron tempts him off to a bad redemption arc fuelled by wrath, but he starts and ends the season trying to act compassionately instead.

* * *

Busy fainting right now though. What a dork.

* * *

Meanwhile Cas and Hael have a very sad conversation about what they want to be and do.

(Well Cas pretends not to know what happened after Hael’s sad story)

“How could that happen?”

“… I don’t know.”

* * *

I mean funny as that is, he feels horrendously guilty about all this and is avoiding talking about what he did or hiding from the blame she’d level at him if she knew.

* * *

> CASTIEL   
> There’s nothing to be afraid of. I can assure you.
> 
> HAEL   
> But Heaven – there was order. There was purpose.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> Well, believe it or not, there may be something even better down here.

Aww Caaas. He’s been sold on the worth of Earth and humanity as long as we’ve known him, so it’s not exactly a surprise for him to say Earth is better, as he knows it way better than any other angel by this point. But it still counts as a rejection of sorts of Heaven, just for getting him to say something on the record about this. He is still empathising with Hael more like they’re both tourists here, while by 10x01 when he’s listing off his human things, Hannah seriously side-eyes him over how assimilated he sounds.

Right now it’s more like the “poetry to fish” part of things, where he’s trying to ask Hael what she wants to do and she doesn’t even get the concept. Cas trying to be hopeful and excited for the angels to develop the same way he has will always break my heart…

> CASTIEL   
> There’s opportunity for you, the others who have fallen, to do finally do what you would like to do – not just what you’ve been told.
> 
> HAEL   
> And what would I like to do?
> 
> CASTIEL   
> You tell me. If you could do anything, what would it be?

He’d be such a good leader for them, if nothing terrible ever happened like it always does >.> Maybe more of a sort of spiritual leader rather than political/military as it always seems to end up.

Maybe he could start an advice column for Heaven in season 12 as a sort of small first step

* * *

Oh dear, Dean and “Ezekiel” sharing the red exit signs over their heads. It’s been a while but now they’re attracted to Dean like flies. Also in the long shot there’s more blue and yellow – the colour associated with angel drama on this show. Generally the sort involving things not being as they seem and general manipulative nonsense.

* * *

“Zeke” takes waaaaay too long to say “Ezekiel”

Other things with names:

> DEAN   
> All right, Ezekiel. How do I know you’re not hunting me or Castiel like the other angels?
> 
> […]
> 
> EZEKIEL   
> Believe it or not, some of us still do believe in our mission. And that means we believe in Castiel…and you.

I hope it’s obvious why I think it’s adorable that Gadreel and Dean are talking about him and Cas as a unit. Dean is defensive of Cas just on principle even here after being attacked like that earlier – between the angel who slammed him into the car, and Tractor Angel and friend later Dean spends a lot of time being used as a way to find Cas and defending him anyway even though he doesn’t know. At this point Gadreel’s help could be a ruse to get at Cas for all he knows, so his wariness especially after the first angel attack is to get Gadreel in the holy fire pretty much to make sure that he’d be cool with Cas

(which is relevant for the fact Gadreel ends up insisting Cas is sent away and betrays this exact trust because it’s important Dean does this whole holy fire thing apparently on Cas’s behalf on if they should trust Gadreel or not, not his or Sam’s necessarily, but using THIS as the judge of character… 

Saying he believes in him isn’t the same as prioritising him, although at least he doesn’t want to actively kill him >.>)

* * *

> BOBBY   
> Just die? All the good you’ve done, all the people you’ve saved, all the sacrifices you’ve made? You’ve saved the world, son. How many people can say that? How many people can say that they have left this godforsaken hunk of dirt that much a better place? What you call dyin’ I call leavin’ a legacy.

Bobby carries on representing a pretty rational view on dying, especially in the context of their entire lives, as he alludes to here. 

Bobby is kind of enjoying being the paragon father figure – for however screwed up they all were together (he is subtextually  _heavily_  tied to Dean’s alcoholism) his use like this also represents his own legacy at this point in the show. To Sam, it’s interesting as Bobby playing favourites with Dean was always somewhat clear just on who subtly got more attention (which isn’t a blame game – just Bobby and Dean clicked over big issues that drew them closer) but especially at all the biggest moments, Bobby and Sam didn’t actually communicate a whole lot, or they communicated as a family with 3 or more people in the room… I think this is weirdly the longest alone time/positive reinforcement Sam ever gets from Bobby, and that’s his own conjuration of who Bobby is to him. Like, obviously that suggests that Sam DID feel Bobby nurtured him emotionally or he wouldn’t be here, but it’s interesting how they’ve had their differences over the years. Between Mystery Spot, Appointment in Samarra and this episode, Sam kills or attempts to kill Bobby 3 times (I mean Dean does it in this episode’s case but he’s ALSO a conjuration of Sam’s mind so there’s at least a subconscious sense of conflict between them as Sam is naturally inclined to rebel against parental figures (Dean included at times) and while he and Bobby never had a falling out on a grand scale, I’m interested in the low-key conflict)

… also contrasting Bobby as the ideal father figure to Chuck the representation of the terrible father figure (aka derived directly from the mould of John Winchester :P): Bobby absolves Sam of responsibility and tells him it’s enough, while Chuck says to Dean (about him and Sam) that they have the world on their shoulders. Considering Sam’s ended up here because he shouldered a God-level burden and it’s basically killed him, I think that says enough on that. :P

* * *

Cas fiiinally gets in touch and just needs to say “Dean” and Dean’s entire expression changes. Not in the “hey finally some good news” way but in a very nervous, vulnerable way where his first instinct is to glance at Gadreel and then we cut to him leaving the room

Him instinctively ducking out and leaving Gadreel alone with Sam is pretty trusting of Gadreel and also shows the divide between all the characters from the start of the season early on before it ever starts properly. If Dean holding Gadreel at arm’s length doesn’t start fostering it directly… I still think a lot about Cas saying how he could hear Dean because, uh, angels can hear much more than people… Gadreel probably at least knows it’s Cas since Dean addresses him by name and the previous Dean and Gadreel scene establishes that Gadreel knows who they are, that Dean n Cas are associated closely, etc.

Dean for his part has Gadreel’s word he is on Cas and Dean’s side (and phrased like that to include the both of them) but he still gives him a “don’t let the other angel hear about this” look and goes for some privacy. So he clearly doesn’t trust him fully, at least not with Cas. Maybe hoping Gadreel can just do the healing touch with Sam and then they can go their uneasy separate ways or something.

So I guess it’s quietly protective of Cas, but before anything else happens, is putting a little bit of space between Cas and Gadreel… Which of course is eventually paid back by Gadreel asking for a  _lot_  of space between himself and Cas…

* * *

Anyway Dean n Cas talk… Cas’s immediate concerns:

> CASTIEL  
> Metatron tricked me. It wasn’t angel trials. It was a spell. I wanted you to know that.

Mirror how Dean turned his prayer around to say he wasn’t mad at Cas but he knows Cas thinks he is (because he never got around to properly apologising for yelling at him last season). Cas kind of taking the blame for being tricked. Feeling bad about everything. And the conversation moving too quickly into being about Sam for them to actually discuss this properly and work out who they feel is and isn’t to blame and so on >.>

> DEAN (on phone)  
> I don’t know. I mean, first he was okay, and then he wasn’t. And I – have you heard my prayers? I’ve been praying to you all night.
> 
> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> Dean, Metatron – he – he took my grace.
> 
> DEAN (on phone)  
> What?
> 
> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> Don’t worry about me. What are you doing for Sam?
> 
> DEAN (on phone)  
> Uh, everything I can. 

It’s also a good deflection because Dean is way too frantic about Sam to press the point with Cas.

(I still wonder about 9x03 and Cas taking the wrong way to get back to the Bunker… to save him from Buckleming writing it makes sense to say instead of him getting lost or not knowing how to ask for directions, he was prioritising running over getting home – not that he has much of a concept of the Bunker as home at this point anyway – and since he’s not in 9x02 (so we can’t use Dabb vs cars to explain it) this conversation between him and Dean here is the only real place to try and analyse why he might change his mind and be hesitant to make his way back to them)

Anyway if Cas was feeling useless already, Dean saying he was praying to him but Cas not hearing it because he’s human has to hurt. And since he’s far away and can’t do anything about it – and is coming to terms with no wings in a way where in a few seasons time Cas is at least used to travelling by car but this is raw and fresh that he can’t zoom over to help – all he can do is avoid the subject, feel terrible, and ask Dean what he can do without Cas there.

* * *

Aww, but I think Cas was friends with Ezekiel based on how he smiles when Dean tells him who’s there. >.> I suppose he loses so many friends it’s pretty hard to keep track of… By the end of the season all the random angels in his army seem to be strange to him too.

* * *

> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> He should be able to help until I get there.
> 
> DEAN (on phone)  
> Wait, no, no, no. No, hey, that’s not an option.
> 
> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> It might be a few days, but –
> 
> DEAN (on phone)  
> Hey, Cas, listen to me. There are angels out there, okay? And they – they’re looking for you, and they’re pissed.

Anyway that’s pt 2 of Cas being driven away before it ever happens… Again, Dean being protective, and he’s making a division aka saying “don’t come here” in a completely well-meaning way to protect Cas from other angels (especially as Dean broadcast his location and one angel has already shown up specifically to look for Cas and 2 more aren’t far off) but it just feels wrong to hear Dean arguing they can’t meet up and Cas has to stay away and not help.

* * *

Or this conversation:

> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> I met one. I think I can help her, Dean.
> 
> DEAN (on phone)  
> No, Cas, I know you want to help, okay? I do, but helping angels is what got you in trouble in the first place. Now, I’m begging you – for once, look out for yourself. Until we figure out what the hell is going on, trust nobody.
> 
> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> And do what? Just abandon them all?
> 
> DEAN (on phone)  
> Damn it, Cas. You hearing yourself? There’s a war on, and it’s on you. There’s thousands of them out th– You said you lost your grace, right? That means you’re human. That means you bleed and you eat and you sleep and all the things you never had to worry about before.
> 
> CASTIEL (on phone)  
> I’m fine, Dean.

Again it comes off, especially with Dean’s tone, as him being almost angry at Cas, but he’s freaking out and concerned about him and wants him safe, so telling him what to do so while his prayer was all “I’m not angry” he can easily seem controlling and pissed off – Cas gets grumpy in return rather than recognising that Dean just wants him safe; Dean changes tactics too late and gets a grumpy “I’m fine” from Cas which is about as stubborn as he can get considering his situation.

And then the other angels show up and derail everything before they can argue it through or come to some sort of softer part of the conversation – at least I’m now in the same SEASON as some of their more emotionally balanced conversations >.>

* * *

> HAEL   
> I don’t understand. I’ll come with you. We can see your friend together.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> It’s complicated. There could be trouble. It’s – it’s best if I go alone. My – my friend – he… needs my help.
> 
> HAEL   
>  _I_  need help.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> You can do this, Hael. This is your chance to help people, to help yourself. I’m sorry.
> 
> CASTIEL turns away. HAEL picks up a length of wood and hits him over the head. CASTIEL falls to the ground unconscious.

In the immediate present, Cas makes up his mind to go try and help Dean anyway because of course he does, because he’s stubborn about that. :P So the Cas’s loyalties divide which he’s tested over all season is here… Being forced to pick between helping angels and Dean, TRYING to pick Dean, and being forced into helping angels anyway. (This is absolutely in no way foreshadowing anything that happens to Cas in the rest of the season :P)

(At least Hannah never smashes him around the head with a plank)

* * *

> HAEL   
> You understand that I couldn’t just let you leave. I’d be lost without you, Castiel.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> Yes, I’m… beginning to see that.
> 
> HAEL   
> It’s the least I could ask of you, considering, well… This  _is_  all your fault, isn’t it? Making the angels fall?

Oh look that’s 2 conversations in a row where he gets blamed for this, although Hael is rather worse about it than Dean considering the whole kidnapping thing :P Anyway stuff being piled onto Cas to make him feel crappy as per usual

* * *

> HAEL   
> We’re going to become more than just friends, Castiel. We’re going to become one.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> You want to possess me.
> 
> HAEL   
> Your vessel is strong. [She shows him a large spreading bruise on her shoulder.] 

If this happened in season 11 we’d  _flip_  about Hael being an Amara parallel – this pretty much exactly sounds like her and even has a mark on her shoulder/chest area she shows Cas. It’s weird how much these little motifs get mirrored – there are probably tiny moments up and down canon just waiting to become scarily plot relevant to season 12 stuff :P

As it is, Cas has had personhood for less than 24 hours and it’s already under threat – in 9x02 Abaddon who Amara is a spiritual successor to in character tropes on the show – says he’s the perfect vessel and that all builds up to the Amara stuff. So little seeds all over the place for the rest of Carver era

> HAEL   
> You were right, Castiel. With us together, I think I could learn to like it here.

*Dean sounding unimpressed about Amara probably not even knowing what a cheeseburger is in 11x01*

* * *

(I do wonder if Hael heard him on the phone too which is why I was wondering about Gadreel hearing Dean’s side)

* * *

*Bobby gets murdered almost exactly the same as in Mystery Spot*

> SAM   
> Dean, are you insane?!
> 
> DEAN   
> Come on, Sammy. Bobby was the part of you that wants to die. I know it stings, but he had to go.
> 
> SAM   
> No.  _You_  have to go. When are you gonna realize it’s over?! There’s nothing to fight for!

I think Sam’s responding to vague external stimuli again – the last thing he’d have heard Dean say is “fix him!” and if he knew the details of the reporting on the meteor shower subconsciously then he could know that. This is the first time we dip back in to see how he’s doing after that.

I think he’s misdiagnosing exactly who Bobby and Dean are: they’re self-described as his will to die and his will to fight, but Bobby is in no way advocating giving up, rather the same positive message Death has that Sam has lived a great life and is due his rest, so it’s a self-affirming and peaceful message. Dean represents the violent and dangerous side of the co-dependency as much as anything: he repeatedly has no plan (in this scene he starts trying to fight Sam as his “plan” and that’s actively hurting Sam as his plan to keep Sam alive) and of course he violently kills Bobby to buy time to talk Sam out of going, and that Mystery Spot parallel is presumably not unintentional (Carver to Carver) of the lengths they go to to bring the other back; showing it as at the expense of Bobby is like, the worst offence.

* * *

And Sam here beats it:

> SAM   
> You might not accept it, but it’s in there. It’s in that house.
> 
> […]
> 
> It’s okay. It’s what I want.
> 
> SAM pats DEAN twice on the cheek. DEAN disappears.

Which is hugely symbolic that he’s letting go and moving on, exactly as Bobby once instructed them to do, after learning the hard way not to stick around beyond death because he couldn’t leave the fight

* * *

Dean says “bite me” to the angels :’) I know I know it’s not an uncommon thing to say, I just think it’s cute Cas picked it up and Dean’s still using it, so it’s like their Couple Thing

* * *

> DEAN   
> Are you kidding me? Are you saying there’s no way to save my brother’s life?
> 
> EZEKIEL   
> No good ways, I’m afraid.
> 
> DEAN   
> Well, what are the bad ones? We’re out of options here, man. Good or bad, let me hear them.

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/146453583523/elizabethrobertajones-1x22-also-made-this-of>

I mean Dean does briefly take a good line on it:

> DEAN   
> No, it’s Sam’s call. There’s no way in hell he’d say yes to being possessed by anything.

But I don’t think Gadreel is being overtly manipulative here, as he seems pretty straightforward and true to his surface level characterisation especially at the end of the season: I actually think taking him at face value as well meaning but dispassionate about saving Sam because he just doesn’t know him and even if he stands to gain from being allies with Dean, didn’t exactly show up angling to get THIS close, aka knowing even as he hopped off that bus he could possess Sam and get in with Dean that way. I can see him formulating the possession while he’s left alone with Sam as a strategy that would symbiotically benefit them all, but not to the point he’s betting on it and I think he was genuinely disappointed but meaning to leave before more angels showed up when Dean stops him… Gadreel had some time to seriously think about the situation and work out some survival options (which are needed as they’re under attack by random angels and any of them might recognise him if his luck is terrible).

* * *

> SAM   
> If I go with you… can you promise that this time it will be final? That if I’m dead, I stay dead. Nobody can reverse it, nobody can deal it away… and nobody else can get hurt because of me.

“nobody ese can get hurt because of me” OH SAM

Actually now I think about it, have we actually heard any comment from him on Billie’s new rule, aside from Dean’s interpretation of that as “she wants to kill us” that she has to keep correcting him on?

Delivered to Sam right when he’s dealing with all the collateral damage from the Darkness’ release, including a hospital full of dead bodies and a zompire disease he’s determined to cure and recklessly stayed behind alone to do so,  it does hark right back here.

* * *

Dean on the outside world takes it exactly as Sam giving up and throwing himself away as his imagined counterpart did, basically proving Sam’s fear that’s been here all episode.

* * *

> DEAN   
> Even if I said yes, it doesn’t mean squat. Sam will never say yes – not to you.
> 
> EZEKIEL   
> But he would say yes to you.

… Don’t possess Sam, Dean.

Now Gadreel actually has a chance to do this (the “best of a bad situation”) he now shows pretty cunning ideas for how to get what they need, but I still don’t think he outright manipulates Dean until the end of the episode, if only because later characterisation makes me think he’s been upfront for at least most of the time he’s been onscreen until now, and his later characterisation doesn’t treat him as a sneaky villain despite everything he does. Just desperate.

Actually, thinking of Appointment in Samarra I talked a bit in the rewatch of that one about Dean taking power of attorney over Sam. This is really making me think they just needed a proper agreement about when and where that was appropriate, probably, you know, during season THREE after the first round of soul-selling. Maybe 4 or 5 – 5 seemed a good time to try and get to grips with all their issues, as they were on a self-reflection round that season and actually did extremely well to not be totally fucked up about everything by the end of the season…. ANYWAY point is why do they not have a proper contingency agreement for this. Sam clearly seems to know based on his subconscious manifestation of Dean exactly what Dean is up to on the outside, and he asks Death for a permanent death pretty much because Dean…

Ah well I think my point was to muse on the similarities between these episodes, especially with Dean feeling like Sam is kind of making terrible mistakes:

> DEAN   
> What the hell you doing, Sam?

Perhaps equivalent to his rampage in 6x11, only really Dean is being as dangerous as Mystery Spot!Sam in Sam’s mind with that Bobby-killing parallel, so they’re kind of trying to outrace each other for the right to make this decision…

* * *

You know, the car Hael is driving is already splattered with blood on the seats on both sides… Uh… I think… she may have stolen this car. Violently.

* * *

Cas exploiting better human knowledge and experience than Hael, although who the fuck taught him about seatbelts still is a mystery to me. I’m going to chalk this up entirely to Cas’s tactical genius, analysing on the spur of the moment what these strange hanging straps are about and how they might be utilised, and sussing out their existence makes this not just strategic but shows how clever he truly is.

* * *

Cas approaching Hael looks so threatening, and she looks so broken – probably this shot is WHY they made her a teenage girl.

> CASTIEL   
> I didn’t want to hurt any of them. I want to help you. I will devote my life to helping you all.
> 
> HAEL   
> Do you know how ridiculous you sound? 

Like yeah, she’s an angel so technically she’s way more dangerous than human!Cas, but appearances don’t reflect it, and he’s blood-splattered and lurching towards her holding a knife, so.

Anyway then melodrama, as Cas rejects being possessed right as Sam is off being tricked into it in the other branch of the story:

> CASTIEL   
> You’re wrong. I’m one of you. I will never stop being one of you.
> 
> HAEL   
> Don’t you get it? Together, I can protect you, Castiel.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> I don’t need your – I don’t want your protection.
> 
> CASTIEL turns and walks away.
> 
> HAEL   
> If you leave me here in this broken girl [CASTIEL stops] I swear it, Castiel – I will tell them where you are. And they will hunt you. Until their last breath, they will seek revenge on the angel that did this, who destroyed Heaven.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> Stop.
> 
> HAEL   
> They will seek a vengeance on you that will make God striking down Lucifer seem like child’s play.
> 
> CASTIEL   
> Stop it.
> 
> HAEL   
> I will go on angel radio and tell them everything unless you open your heart and say yes.
> 
> CASTIEL stabs her in the chest with the angel knife. White light flares from her mouth, eyes and the knife wound as she dies.

Cas again claiming being an angel and refusing to give up his old identity even though he’s human now, vs one of the many many times they reject him. Like, yes you can still define yourself as an angel, but that doesn’t mean you’re part of the family any more… by 11x02 they deny him the right to even call himself an angel despite him having his grace back.

Also pointing out the reference to God and Lucifer just because Carver Era ends with that conflict’s dirty laundry being dragged out – and of course for the endless Cas and Sam stuff it’s interesting they’re having this parallel possession threat episode, where Sam loses out and Cas manages to resist being possessed… On the other hand that’s the bait and switch in 11x10 who leaves the episode with Lucifer inside them. And I was talking about Hael’s doppleganger as Casifer foreshadowing. In the here and now of just this episode, Cas sets a moral precedent that being possessed against your will because of blackmail is the wrong option, and Hael is a darker mirror that doesn’t get what it wants vs Gadreel/Dean pulling the move on Sam in the very next scene.

* * *

Oh, “Dean” mentions “cronuts” to Death. Hybrid food imagery, a season or two early.

I assume this is Gadreel just from:

> DEAN   
> But you got to let me in, man. You got to let me help. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.

I’d have said it was Dean up to that point but that “you got to let ME in” is the sneaky request to allow Gadreel to possess Sam, so I think it’s much more likely that Dean gave Gadreel a script or some idea of what to say, and Gadreel tailors it that way. Dean may even be listening/talking via the head-boop method Gadreel showed him the previous scene, but Gadreel had to ASK Sam for permission to possess him, and so it had to be him saying these words. Gadreel’s only real much-explored character trait is being REALLY GOOD at reading people and acting accordingly to play them or what, from making up his own decision to defect from Metatron when he realises what a knob he is, to making the judgement Cas is trustworthy, that whole interrogation scene in 9x18, to acting as Sam in all those places where he was forced to do it:

or knowing where to put Sam in the back of his head to keep him happy while possessed, so him playing Dean off of what he’s seen so far is very believable with how he is developed further.  I mean I can see WHY there’s a debate about this since it would have started with just this 1 episode to go off and you have like 4 layers of reality to debate in Sam’s head (Sam is real, Dean1 and Bobby are fake, Death is debatable but most likely real, Dean2 is either really Dean or Gadreel, and Gadreel when he reveals himself is the only other thing in here at the moment of possessing Sam that is undebatably also definitely in his head as his actual self…) but with full season hindsight and especially when you come to the show as a meta writer after 9x18 and see that as the key to the whole season… Yeah it’s Gadreel who’s acting Dean2 and I’m hard to budge on this interpretation >.>

I mean either way this is kinda terrible and say a lot about the tragedy and danger of the co-dependency, whether the words come from Dean’s mouth or not because saying it came from Gadreel doesn’t absolve Dean of anything, as the only reason it works is it’s a plausible Dean phrase and he set the whole thing up and this summarises his own arc/panic for this episode 

The fact Dean is capable of saying such a thing is still very much in the text, and “there ain’t no me etc” while being a pretty chilling summary of the Gadreel/Sam symbiosis for the next few episodes also says a lot about Dean. Since I’m still messed up about 1x22, compare this:

> Azazel (goes to him): Funny, but that’s all part of your M.O., isn’t it? Masks all that nasty pain, masks the truth.
> 
> Dean: Oh, yeah? What’s that?
> 
> Azazel: You know, you fight and you fight for this family, but the truth is they don’t need you. Not like you need them. Sam – he’s clearly John’s favorite. Even when they fight, it’s more concern than he’s ever shown you.

I do kind of feel they went back and dug out Dean’s oldest pain and darkest feelings from right back in season 1 to fuel this descent arc, which is to me why it feels so authentic.

Anyway it also sort of “refreshes” 8x23 by having the same scenario of Dean/”Dean” talking Sam back from the brink of death – in this case the collateral damage is going to come on a much more personal level than just letting the gates of hell  _not_ be closed, and Crowley still free and villainous. A fresh set of actions with fresh motivations and repercussions to be debated just to kind of keep the season contained within itself.

* * *

Poor Gadreel’s unnamed vessel. I mean at least we know he manages to get a job for the next 10 episodes before his life goes to hell again. I hope his recent religious experience gives him a new joy for life in the next couple of months between here and there >.> I hope it wasn’t too awkward for him to just walk out of the hospital after being found with no short term memory in a room full of weird occult sigils

* * *

Dean just walks out of the hospital and even falls into step with Gadreel with the long shot out of habit… When we have the close ups, they’re out of step, which is so disconcerting after all these years it’s almost hard to watch.

> EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY   
> He will not feel me, no. There is no reason for Sam to know I’m in here at all.
> 
> DEAN   
> You’re joking. No, this is – this is too big.
> 
> EZEKIEL IN SAM’S BODY   
> And what will he do if you do tell him he is possessed by an angel?
> 
> DEAN   
> Well, he’ll have to understand.

Whoops.

Again, to his credit, Dean actually does want to tell Sam right away how he managed to get him out of the fire and back into the frying pan, but Gadreel knew this was a bad way because it involved trickery and knows exactly how conditional that “yes” was because it was only a yes to “not dying” not to being possessed – the Lucifer mention this episode is almost certainly a shorthand reminder of exactly WHY Sam would hate to be possessed by an angel just on principle. 2 minutes in Sam’s head probably only serves to make him more determined not to let Sam know, and so it begins, Gadreel sitting comfortable where he knows Dean is too desperate for Sam to be alive for him to risk it with Gadreel…

* * *

Meanwhile, Cas is having a rather tougher time of being human. Bye bye trenchcoat.

Also why does the old woman doing her laundry over in the corner not notice the blood-soaked guy stripping off there.

The trenchcoat probably ends up held as evidence if he just left it in the washing machine and legged it.

This room is aggressively blue and yellow, colours associated with angels, but the chairs behind Cas are tan and white, which are his old colours. And he ends up picking the spectrum of human colours:

Rainbow!

I’ll never be over the symbolism of Cas stripping down like that, shedding all his old angel clothes, and being kinda reborn human, drinking the water of life etc. He never got to do the total naked and screaming bit but you know, close enough.

Happy birthday, Cas? :P

* * *

Sam also wakes up kinda reborn but also feeling terrible. Welcome to being technically a zombie for 9 episodes!

(I have, in the time it took to watch this because ugh I need Gadreel to come possess me next and prop up my carcass so I can get stuff done, also now watched 2x01 and I’m thinking ahead to Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, and how horrified and upset Dean was as he began to realise that he was brought back from the dead… It was pretty much sheer denial keeping him afloat by Crossroad Blues when it was confirmed and I don’t think he was exactly surprised :P Anyway Dean sympathised with the zombie girl there, Sam never seemed to get an arc like this for his own resurrection in season 3 which was focussed on Dean’s deal and impending death, so hey, here’s some new ground for you, Sammy!)

(2x01 also has Dean accuse Tessa of getting off on playing with him so I think that might explain why Sam said that to Death for coming to reap him because of course this episode parallels back to that one hugely what with it being a Winchester stuck in a hospital bed episode. Which kinda makes Gadreel Azazel… I’m also very unsure how bitter to be about Tessa in 9x22 as her use is symbolically super important and the way she ties into this season is huge considering 9x01 and 2x01 are mirror episodes for Sam and Dean.)

Also:

> SAM   
> Good. ‘Cause we got work to do.

Not one of the shots of them looking in the trunk, unified. Just Sam saying it on his own. But it’s the sentiment from 1x01 and the end of season 2, used in a sort of corrupted way here, with the lop-sidedness of it all.


	2. 9x02

I have been informed by [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) that exactly 4 things happen in this episode so it should be much faster to watch than the last couple

Oh boy I spent 2 hours sitting here like “how weird Dabb only wrote 3 episodes this season” and second-guessing myself but coming up blank. I finally went and looked up what the 4th was.

Kind of a shame Dabb only wrote 3 episodes this season. :P

* * *

I really ought to have been keeping track of this creepy abandoned house because I feel like it has been in multiple episodes.

Makes a good metaphor for Abaddon’s recovered corpse? All busted up and nobody home and then full of demons >.>

* * *

As with most Dabb episodes at the start of the season in Gamble/Carver eras, it sort of feels like the real start of the season after the showrunners faff around setting the scene :P Sam and Dean are talking, and we start with the shot of Dean lying flat out on the table, which is the symbolic mirror to his demonic death-snooze in 9x23, so Dabb opens up with Dean literally mirroring the final second of the season, so the direct narrative bookends for Dean start here, rather than 9x01.

It’s also the catch-up conversation for Sam and since he doesn’t remember last episode it’s like the season is literally just starting for him:

> SAM  
> So, what, Cas is human?
> 
> DEAN  
> Ish. I mean, he’s got no Grace, no wings, no… harp, whatever the hell else he had.

Dabb is on a  _rampage_  this season to have Dean describe Cas. Yea high, sensible shoes. Dorky little guy. I don’t even know :P Dean seems to single-handedly define Cas, which is actually a core dynamic of them, I guess, especially as Cas often looks to Dean for definition. (” _in the words of a good friend…_ ”)

Anyway my second favourite game this season is Gadreel’s bitchface spotting from inside Sam, and I always smile to think about how this is the first real conversation we see him overhear and the first thing he hears is Dean wildly stereotyping his species?

* * *

> SAM  
> Well, you think he can handle a road trip like that?
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, Cas is a big boy. Things go Breaking Bad, he knows our number. Right now we got bigger worries.

Dean nooo.

(To be fair this is more because they were snapping at each other and Cas said he was fine so Dean maybe doesn’t realise how much Cas needs help because he feels reassured)

* * *

Wait I forgot to check… Did Gadreel fix Dean’s face visibly by the end of last episode

He looks totally fine now.

I’m going to assume he did that. Especially as 9x03 confirms this can only be the next day even if Dean could conceivably go a day without telling Sam anything :P

(Their need to have important conversations at scenic locations trumps everything including urgent explanations.)

* * *

You know why I like Abaddon?

She’s single-handedly revived the bizarre early-seasons tradition of one billion candles for dramatic effect.

it’s the goffic vanity mirror above the sink

* * *

(I think Enoby would like Abaddon)

* * *

You know that guy’s dead after clapping his eyes on Abaddon in all her nekkid glory.

* * *

I guess that goes with all the rebirth imagery from last episode for Cas and Sam, now Dean “resurrecting” on that park bench so the question is… Is Crowley in the safe womb of the trunk of the Impala, ready for HIS rebirth as much the same guy but more emo?

(If you hadn’t guessed, the theme for 9x02 is “emo as hell”)

Thinking of Crowley and still being alive, we have the “I would have stabbed him in the brain” thing showing not just that Sam and Dean would do things differently, but that Dean misunderstands what Sam would do, and he draws a wrong interpretation.

Really wrong, considering the only time Sam’s willingly spared Crowley’s life… he was soulless. (Dabbflin episode, too) He is a 1 issue guy when it comes to Crowley, and that has literally not changed ever. :P

Meanwhile Dean has, even by the end of season 5, the much more complicated history of working with him, and I can’t help seeing him saving Crowley for later even dispassionately and with the intention just to use him, as paving the way for all the worse stuff to come. After all, Crowley repays the favour and “saves” Dean at the end of the season….

* * *

Dean needs saving from Kevin first and foremost. Have we ever paid attention to Dean’s Mystery Spot deaths coming back to haunt him, because I was talking about Mystery Spot last episode, and here he is nearly getting taken out by someone with a crappy shot.

I mean, considering this season ends with what season 3 weighed on Dean hardest, that he’d die and come back a demon, seems sort of neat. :P

* * *

Anyway. Ongoing violations: bringing Crowley into the Bunker where Kevin is. Bringing GADREEL who actually ends up being the one to kill him into the Bunker where Kevin is. Just generally massively endangering Kevin and not informing him of the dangers and exposing him to all this… It’s not a good thing when you bait and switch that Kevin may get killed by Crowley in the safety of his chosen weird creepy Bunker of residence only for it to happen an even worse way. Of course he’s the Sam parallel with the same anvillicious weight as Charlie acts as one for Dean, so this immediate response to Crowley being brought into the Bunker is a parallel for the violation of Gadreel’s presence inside him that Sam’s unaware of.

* * *

(Gadreel probably like  _WTF, Winchesters_ , as he starts to understand exactly the sort of nonsense they play with. He doesn’t even bat an eye when he finds out Dean has the Mark of Cain, does he? Just like “oh right that’s why it hurt so much when he stabbed me, I see.”

Traumatising Kevin aside, they seem a bit more on top of things this season and I can’t remember them dropping the idiot ball on major plot stuff, e.g. the worst thing would be Crowley getting free, but he’s let out rather than it being a mistake… Compared to the end of season 8, they do pretty well :P)

* * *

Guess who is currently possessed by an angel:

* * *

But I mean seriously, Kevin’s whispered  _“No_ ” as he realises that Crowley’s still alive and well and the Winchesters didn’t do the thing… With the info he’s got he MIGHT be able to rationalise it as them not finishing the job because the angels fell first, but tbh he’s got to have his suspicions that they just stopped >.>

> KEVIN  
> What’s Crowley doing here?! Why isn’t he dead?! Why aren’t you stabbing him right now?!
> 
> DEAN  
> Alright, alright, chill out, Kevin, okay? We need him.
> 
> KEVIN  
> What?!

Honestly the silliest part of this is what they want Crowley for – some new and completely ignored later goal of hunting down all the demons on earth the slow way. I guess a band aid solution to closing the gates with the same goal as they have to rationalise their choice not to kill Sam to get it over and done with the easy way, but it’s completely unrealistic and they’re not thinking big enough to how to actually use Crowley, such as finding out his schemes, his resources, etc. You’d think finding out WHAT he is doing is way more important – like how hunting down Dick Roman’s activities involved a lot of crossing paths with human resources leading to meeting Charlie and focussing on WHAT he was doing more than who random Leviathan were to kill… (Not like Frank didn’t give them enough names :P) Oviously the story doesn’t actually HAVE anything for Crowley to be doing on the sly that they don’t know about and his only sneaky plan of the season he lets Dean on immediately, at least on the “let’s go find Cain” side of things…

On the other hand the Winchesters DO show a reasonably clever approach to boring Crowley into being useful by ignoring him. It has the same sort of vibe as them sassing that angel for info at the end of the season. After being kinda dense about how to operate on a higher level in season 8 culminating in letting Abaddon go, they’re slowly growing into the sorts of people who can have a meaningful conversation with God about what he should do. :P Honestly, seeing how high they end up reaching, being back in the early days of them enjoying having genuine power over just little old Crowley is kind of interesting. I was saying how the Bunker changes their social standing, and I was thinking about how in season 1 or whatever, Rowena would have  _destroyed_  them if they’d bumped into her. Their only way to survive her would be for her to think they weren’t worth her time :P And yet since they meet her in season 10, they generally seem either evenly matched or get to overpower her despite the fact she’s a powerful witch and they’re not. Sam generally seems to be the one to trump her as well, with surprise handcuffings, so it’s not even like Dean had an advantage from the Mark, and they only drew to that impasse once in 10x17… Anyway, this feels like one of the first times they employ both their resources and a sense of superiority and lack of fear of a much bigger player than them, so I’m calling it one of their steps up in the world, as they grow into their new position with the Bunker and its resources.

* * *

> DEAN  
> I gotta make some phone calls. You need to hit the Angel tablet, see if you can find anything on the spell that Metatron used to empty out Heaven.
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah, maybe we can reverse it before the God Squad does too much damage.

You know the worst part about Kevin translating the entire angel tablet and then being killed off because he wasn’t useful any more is that the fact the entire angel tablet is sitting around translated just, like, in the Bunker, is another hanging plot thread.

Unless Gadreel stole Kevin’s research too along with the tablets?

You know I haven’t ever checked that but it would make the Kevin headache a bit less of a headache :P

* * *

Aaah I remember the days when trying to get a translation of the angel tablet was a fascinating source of potential… I guess if they never tell us we get to say forever and ever that it was “grace of an angel in love with a human” like the fanon conviction it was such. I still think 10x23 at the very least backed that up. :P Just that there’s nothing for them to do with it any more in the story.

* * *

Meanwhile: Abaddon is catching up with the world since she was gone, and I think this use of her is really clever, again for showing the changing world they’re in. The Winchesters have unbelievable resources (casually asking a Prophet of the Lord to translate the Literal Word of God for help, while they have the King of Hell in their dungeon (finally!) interrogating HIM for more information a well…) Abaddon pops up as one of the Old Guard who exists before the events of the show ever kick off (the MoL massacre pre-dates even the earliest activity we know of Azazel doing by some time) and we’ve seen Meg survive it in real time, aware she was a relic of older times and struggling to find order and meaning in the world. Abaddon is her spiritual successor, another Lucifer old guard type demon, but who hasn’t seen any of the progress of the apocalypse arc, and not knowing any of the events that took them here.

At this point, Crowley’s helped them exactly as much as he’s opposed them (season 5 and 7 vs season 6 and 8) … that demon we meet in 9x10 expresses a similar sentiment and Crowley approves and Abaddon kills her (the next Dabb episode along from this – he seems to have been super fond of this conflict & probs would have squished in some more if he hadn’t had to create a random void in canon for his 3rd episode of the season, hence Abaddon’s farewell episode having worse than usual pacing… I feel like Bucklemming had to finish what he started without even a springboard to do it) Anyway we’ve kind of got used to the “devil you know” style bad guy, and Crowley as a manageable, even friendly opposition. They beat him in a direct one on one game of wits in season 8, after all, which is the one time they seriously go up against each other.

Bringing Abaddon into this, you have a violent, destructive force, that just sort of  _is_  for its own sake, and represents also a very old school sort of demon – e.g. to go as far back as Phantom Traveller, that demon didn’t  _want_  anything, it was just bringing down planes for kicks.

I don’t think Crowley was particularly doing anything  _wrong_  (from the perspective of his demon underlings, at least not in the way that eventually leads to the walk out in 11x22) over the last few seasons but Abaddon seems to represent demon-ing done  _right_ , which then makes you ask what exactly Crowley is instead, especially if she already has a beef with him before the new softer Crowley has really had a chance to show himself.

Anyway I guess you could argue it just shows how Crowley is way more adaptable and better at surviving and that his previous brushes with humanity have made him much more wiley and therefore likely to survive. I mean this is the same guy who said “am I the only one who doesn’t underestimate those denim wrapped nightmares!??” and that’s the exact trump card he pulls on Abaddon this season.

Mostly I mention this because there’s the exact same dynamic being used to show the change and complexity and how far they’ve strayed from the “accepted” normal path for their kind by someone who’s more of a blank slate original model no experience of any of the intervening plot over on the other side of the story… <http://justanotheridijiton.tumblr.com/post/130107259854/deansass-9x23-do-you-believe-in-miracles-in>

* * *

> DEAN  
> Yeah, Irv, fallen angels.
> 
> IRV (O.S.)  
> Huh. That’s a wrinkle.
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, trust me, they’re just monsters with good PR.

I really hope this is a catch up shorthand for Dean contacting everyone in his phone and this wasn’t the only dude he told, since he signs off with “spread the word” and Irv is the only person who doesn’t make it out of this episode :P

It occurs to me anyway that the Winchesters know these guys, who they probably bump into on the obligatory off-screen rugarou hunts, and they never really tell them much about angels or any of the big stuff… Maybe it’s a bad thing to be simultaneously watching the early seasons because it keeps dragging my thoughts back that way instead of up to the end of the show because I’m just thinking about how baby Winchesters never knew a thing about angels and it was earth-shaking to them to finally meet one and have them confirmed. Unless they happen to hear the hunters they meet say they have a lot of faith for example, they have to fling the “yeeeeah Heaven is 100% real, angels are a thing oh and um it’s also broken” at a ton of hunters who if they never get sucked into mytharc stuff, are as surprised by this as the Winchesters once were. And Tracy, who we’re introduced to in the immediate next scene proves why it’s a good idea NOT to share the mytharc gossip with hunters casually, as she comes with a pre-packaged tragic backstory that she blames on Sam for the mytharc crap he got involved in. Basically, “Hi I’m Sam I was once the chosen vessel of the archangel Lucifer”  is the worst conversation opener ever, and even if after season 9 hunters in general are a bit more aware of angels, I’d bet up until this point they’ve been pretty quiet about it :P

Tracy is a good early example of the later Carver era theme of “you can’t outrun your past” but maybe Irv quietly has some stuff to say about not sharing relevant info that could really help someone out if only they knew, and Dean’s having that conversation with his back to Kevin and currently unknowingly possessed Sam at the table :P

* * *

Anyway I do wonder how Tracy was in exactly the right place to catch that vampire. I’d assume she’d be working by mimicking his MO for picking up victims, but it’s the middle of the freakin’ day, and that seems wrong for vampires >.>

* * *

Her little blue beetle car makes me wonder if it’s the same one they used for Ava back in season 2 and the MotW girl in the imaginary friend episode.

* * *

I feel like there’s a serious theme between Abaddon using the bus to capture a ton of new meatsuits of the army dudes, and the double trap of Tracy catching the demon and then being caught in turn by the demons as soon as she finishes enacting her trap. There’s a lot of vessels within vessels and traps and danger from within blah blah subtle thematic relevance to Sam still wandering around with Gadreel in him

* * *

> SAM  
> Oh, God. This place reeks of sulfur.
> 
> DEAN  
> Between the stink, with the freak thunderstorms, and every cow dead within three miles, I’ll take demons for $1000, Alex.

d-demon signs?? In CARVER ERA?

I thought they were pretending those didn’t exist

Okay back to my official headcanon of demon!Dean driving around accidentally killing every cow along every road he took

I don’t know why I’m happy. Continuity does weird things to me.

* * *

That gun pointing at Kevin isn’t ominous at all

I like the contrast of the mess of devices on the desk: modern phone, tablet from before the dawn of time, modern laptop, ancient phone, biro and paper.

* * *

Anyway here’s some more hope for the future re: objectifying our poor main characters now Robbie has gone:

> SERGEANT (cont’d)  
> So unless you can give me one good reason you got a couple of pretty-boy agents poking around my crime scene, 

I think we’re in good hands

* * *

> SAM  
> Maybe—fifteen, twenty years ago. Every one of these bodies has a fatal wound, or two, or three, but they’re all old.
> 
> DEAN  
> So we’re looking at meatsuits? The bodies took a licking, and the demons inside kept them ticking.
> 
> SAM  
> Probably. I think they were possessed.

I think it’s actually cruel to make Sam say these things while he’s currently a zombie propped up by an angel :P

> DEAN  
> Abaddon? Seriously?! I thought you Kentucky fried that meatsuit.
> 
> SAM  
> I did, Dean.
> 
> DEAN  
> You—well, then how’d she get it back?

How’s Sam walking around mysteriously upright and fine? Sometimes these things just happen, Dean. Sometimes these things just happen.

* * *

(Like seriously though, they’re going around begging the question so hard. The fact it’s built around Sam’s obliviousness is just painful… I seem to remember pretty much every episode up until Gadreel walks off with him pushes this and it’s just as frustrating every time :P)

* * *

> KEVIN  
> Hello?
> 
> ABADDON  
> This is Dean’s number, but you’re not a Winchester. Who are you?

This episode is actually absurd.

(sorry I’m pushing on despite the “no proper sleep for over a week” thing)

Like, I’m totally aware it’s really serious with the themes and the action and the emotional trauma, but the more I watch the more I’m like, this is kind of nonsense. I mean, my 2 main POVs I’m following are Kevin and Gadreel for lack of any better main character viewpoint with an interesting emotional stake in the episode (Dean’s… going around saying stuff. Sam is following him everywhere and has hair)… Kevin’s day is definitely the worst, but he’s getting these bizarre phone calls… Like, I could easily watch a Weekend at Bobby’s episode of Kevin just trying to get some work done in the Bunker and meanwhile a low budget apocalypse is happening out there. (I am aware Dabb co-wrote that episode and for some reason now I’ve thought about it I can’t shake the feeling :P)

It’s like… none of this is breaking my suspension of disbelief, but I guess like I’ve been saying about the way Carver era escalates and we have to naturally progress to the point where God drinking tea in the Bunker with the King of Hell’s mum is believable, we have some weird little stepping stones. Kevin fielding a call from Abaddon is just a day in the life, and it’s more about how casually weird this is – they’re on cellphones and she can’t actually threaten him or anything so they’re just… chatting… It’s not like she showed up and pinned him by the throat and told him to pass the message on.

* * *

> KEVIN (O.S.)  
> She gave me these coordinates.

Hey remember how season 1 was structured all around John occasionally flinging coordinates at them and leaving them to go save someone?

* * *

> SAM  
> You know this is a trap, right?
> 
> DEAN  
> Yep.
> 
> SAM  
> And we’re just gonna walk right into it?
> 
> DEAN  
> Guns blazing. You with me?
> 
> SAM  
> You know it.

Oh season 9 >.> Dean is already in a kind of YOLO mood, possibly at this point just because he’s made his reckless decisions and the world is still turning, but that guilt about what he’s done to Sam is going to lurk for the next 7 episodes… The whole “guns blazing” thing is part of his many speeches about how he’ll probably die, so this IS Dean language for a suicide mission. I think this is part of the “co-dependency bad” thing as well as more subtle stuff for Dean’s descent arc, just showing he’s in a precarious place, since it’s combined with this appeal to Sam, and they’ve just affirmed a “you and me against the world” mindset.

I can’t for the life of me now remember where I was talking about it but Gadreel metaphorically steps in to represent the sort of thing Sam expressed in 8x23 about Dean trusting others outside of himself – both because Dean’s making a huge trust fall with the angel and it will come back to bite him, but also in the way that Gadreel reacts to Cas and makes Dean send him away in a more subconscious way of Gadreel representing this selfish urge of Sam’s (judgement free zone) and so he’s basically in some respects the representation of Sam’s part of the co-dependency stuff externalised into a different character. If that’s the case, I think I was also talking about THIS somewhere else and now for the life of me can’t remember where or why, but Abaddon works the same for Dean, as his destructive reckless and impulsive side. She’s a force of pure destruction and rage, powered by the same stuff, as we later learn, that ends up in Dean via the Mark (idk if Abaddon would definitely have had her own Mark but since she was killed with the first blade that was suggested to be the ONLY thing that could kill her I guess there’s a fair chance… and as I’ve been saying, Amara is in the show’s tropes etc the spiritual successor to HER)

* * *

Meanwhile: Crowley is sitting around angsting about being nearly made human. There’s a strong emphasis on him remembering “I deserve to be loved!!” and with him being included in the “who do you love” montage in 9x01, this is again sort of bringing this theme forward into this season as a kind of refresher of where we left off for him (since, you know, some people only watch a season once and don’t memorise its entire contents in between seasons :P *clears throat*)

This is important just because the Drowley arc in season 9 is basically the  _only_ clear victory. Since Crowley wasn’t in 9x01 (aside from off-screen) this is the proper start to his season too: last episode set up the angels, and this one sets up the demons. Aka this “deserve to be loved” motivation powers his entire arc, obviously is set up opposite Cas’s side of the love triangle blah blah Destiel #confirmed (I got to save some thoughts for 9x22/23 :P)

* * *

Meanwhile, Crowley is just bothering Kevin probably just to prove to himself he hasn’t lost his edge.

Since the distraction comes right as he’s sitting around thinking about losing his edge.

* * *

The abandoned chemical wasteland actually looks really good in the over-bright Carver era aesthetic, as it’s got a real sun-bleached miserable look to the place… I don’t think this episode is at all pretty to look at but I’ll give this part points for being intentionally visually  _unappealing_. Just looking at how bright and washed out it is makes me feel uncomfortable.

* * *

I hate though that the Dean protecting his dick thing is actually part of the wider theme that goes with all the Gadreel stuff like having no control over malign influences entering your body… You’re only a step away from the whole medieval miasma thing about evil spirits entering your body and making you sick when they didn’t understand stuff like what the chemical spill would have seemed like to them. Again putting Dean in that hypocritical position of trying to futilely defend himself against this while Sam (probably has nothing to worry about with Gadreel in there protecting the family jewels tbh) makes fun of Dean saying that his gesture won’t actually help, when of course Sam is the one already affected by a malign force inside him that he can do nothing to protect himself over.

(Hey I do like Gadreel but this is how the whole “Zeke” part of it gets told :P)

* * *

> KEVIN  
> You’re gonna tell me how to kill a Knight of Hell.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Abaddon giving you trouble, eh? Tell you what, you let me go, and I’ll spit-roast the little whore for you. Sound good?
> 
> KEVIN  
> You’re bluffing. You don’t know.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Oh, I know plenty

Stuff that is much more worrying in hindsight. Crowley deflects back behind torturing Kevin some more, but this is our reminder Crowley is working over the problem as much as the main characters (and this season is even deceptively structured as a “Crowley is helpful” season until it’s really really not, even coming in the right place in his uncomfortable ally vs secondary antagonist pattern per season)… Kevin telling him that they’re working on the same problem as Crowley is gives him the leverage to know that they’re just as freaked out about Abaddon as he is, only he’s going to use this for emotional leverage instead of political gain this time around. (And last season ended up seriously stressing the danger he poses them by knowing them  _so_ well)

* * *

I really love scenes set in the dungeon, as they’re almost all written more like stage plays since there’s so little props and stuff in there. Kevin alone with Crowley are probably some of Kevin’s best scenes just because they really get the focus on them and nothing else going on except what the actors put into it?

* * *

Also: Crowley seeming to lie or just goad Kevin with his dead mother when he’s actually telling the truth that he has kept her alive – and probably actually she’s in more danger of actual death even if she’s not exactly being well-looked after, while Crowley isn’t there to occasionally tell his bloodthirsty little minion not to kill all the bargaining chips he has. In a way, if he’d succeeded in inspiring Kevin to go find her right now, while they’re both still alive, it’s practically a kindness. Considering he flips over from assuring Kevin she’s dead to this stance, I do wonder if it’s not just him now trying to cash that one in, but also a sign of his temporary humanity affecting him. At the very least it’s supposed to make you wonder, and since we have to go 13 more episodes to find out he was telling the truth, so this only works with hindsight, it makes me think.

On the other hand, Crowley goading Kevin into torturing him while he’s helpless has shades of Alastair and Dean, and Crowley making Kevin do something ethically dubious (even if Crowley is a colossal dick :P) just for the hell of it.

* * *

Meanwhile: Dean does the flippy angel blade thing off screen and I am angry at being deprived of anything more than a glimpse. Who directed this? I’m writing to the manager.

* * *

> TRACY  
> Don’t touch me.
> 
> DEAN  
> Whoa. What’s the problem?
> 
> TRACY  
> My family’s dead because of him.
> 
> SAM  
> What?
> 
> TRACY  
> I watched a demon slaughter my parents. And the whole time it talked about how it was celebrating. Some dumb kid let Lucifer out of his cage.
> 
> DEAN  
> …okay, alright, we gotta move. Girl’s with me, Irv…

Couple of things aside from the “you can’t outrun your past” thing – since this is Carver era, I don’t think it should be overlooked that Tracey’s story seems superficially similar to the anger from the random hunter dudes in 5x03 who came to Sam (and we know Carver echoes that side of the story at least once more overtly, with Ann-Marie in 10x01 compared to the woman at the bar Sam worked in… As well, in season 5, Dark Side of the Moon echoed that with the hunters who came to kill them, so Dabb’s been in on the subplot of the anger of the hunting community at the Winchesters) and that this was specifically chosen to be the apocalypse era fuck up, not the one Sam was getting flack for in season 3 when he had that guy coming after him in his Jesusmobile calling him the anti-christ (it’s a struggle when you have to pick between 2 separate instances where you were hunted for fucking up the world :P)… Anyway, more of the looming presence of Lucifer in Carver era (really, he never goes away… Season 12, if he stays presumed dead, will be the first season beyond his influence unless they find some reason like Abaddon’s MoL slaughter to directly impact the dynamic with the British MoL and therefore we can go back to safely blaming his as per usual :P)

Where was I going with this

Oh yeah, the contrast between “some dumb kid” and Sam now, the fact Tracy has their origin story but Sam’s responsible, or at least she holds him responsible and Sam being Sam I guess would think fair dos on that. Anywho, more of this subtle casting the Winchesters as villains of the story and showing their impact on the world, before they seriously get into their next round of bad choices that are coming. In a way just reminding us of what they’re capable of, especially when we’re on the precipice of Dean having his own screw up arc.

Also Dean instinctively putting Tracy with Sam and meaning to go with Irv: that endless thing of pairing up Dean with a dude and Sam with a female character, and for it to be subverted in the way where it only doesn’t happen because there’s a reason in the text another character doesn’t want it to happen that way, disrupting that natural order.

Oh! And also we don’t know how much Gadreel has snooped in Sam’s head or how much he truly knows from angel radio and what whispers he’d have heard about the apocalypse so maybe also for him more moments to realise just how much the Winchesters play with fire and for him to start to understand the level they play at. And being who he is, of course in a place to be deeply sympathetic to Sam’s side for being tricked to do anything by Lucifer.

* * *

Crowley’s speech to Kevin about the Winchesters finding him disposable plays with the Winchesters as the real bad guys thing again. I think they DO care about Kevin (poorly at times … *grinds teeth about the houseboat vs the Bunker*) but the end of season 8 put him on borrowed time when he announced he was dead, and he blamed them THEN as well. In a way I feel his death is terrible but at least was a long time coming as the discussion of him being expendable and just being used happens for a long time through season 8 and I think all his season 9 episodes if I remember them properly? (I may be blurring them all into this episode :P)

Like… just in comparison to later horrible deaths that were thrown at us for shock value, at least there was a degree of treating Kevin with some respect as a character in the build up and trying to sell it as a tragedy?

* * *

Also:

> CROWLEY  
> When the Winchesters are done with you, they’ll toss you aside without a second thought because they can. Because they think they’re special. And because, well, there’s always another prophet waiting in the wings

It’s interesting Metatron has Kevin killed specifically to STOP the line of endless prophets who might threaten him. I’m not sure it makes Kevin’s death much more respectful but considering he bungs up the prophet system and Kevin dies because he was too valuable a piece for the opposing side, it kind of does contrast what Crowley threatened he’d die for.

* * *

Aaah that  iconic shot of Dean where he’s freakishly attractive  _even for Jensen_ and all freckled and eyebrows doing that thing… Also comes with some of his bitterly ironic lines of this season:

> DEAN  
> Listen, for the record, Sam’s not the only guy who thought he was doing right and watched it all go to crap, okay? That’s just part of being—
> 
> TRACY  
> Being a hunter.
> 
> DEAN  
> Being human. Look, you wanna be pissed off at Sam, that’s fine, I get it. But if you wanna go after somebody, you make sure that they got black eyes. Gotta know who the real monsters are in this world, kid.

(Again with this running right up to the final shot of the season – if they weren’t planning it all along I call it a really good use of their resources? Anyway it’s deliciously ironic with post-9x23 hindsight and I feel like I could say a lot more about it but also that it really speaks for itself)

I think Tracy’s interruption is important just because how many friggin “in this life” speeches has Dean given to the younger generation of hunters? I think Kevin’s shut down three or more, Charlie got a couple already, I think Krissy scooped up at least 3 in 2 episodes… :P And more than that, Dean’s making an appeal on behalf of humanity/their humanity/what it means to be human in general, which of course is part of the ongoing Dean “humanity” Winchester theme from many seasons, but of course in season 9, and a Dabb episode in season 9, making Dean say stuff about being human is kiiind of relevant to Dabb’s contribution to the wrap up of the Destiel arc this season.

* * *

… it is entirely unfair that Dean looks so good in this sequence. He’s not even properly season 9 scruffy yet!

* * *

> ABADDON  
> Alone at last.
> 
> […]
> 
> ABADDON  
> I missed you. Did you miss me?

Correct me if I’m wrong despite having watched season 8 in the last month, but Abaddon has not shown any specific interest in Dean until now in the sense of how she goes for him this episode. I mean yeah they’ve interacted, he’s cut her head off, she’s threatened him a few times, but Sam set her on fire, to be fair.

Again I have the thought that Abaddon specifically is paired with Dean to represent something for him this season, as Gadreel is paired with Sam. She only threatens Dean to possess him but it makes the link and of course he gets consumed by darkness entirely without her help anyway. I guess also the whole thing of pairing Sam to an angel and Dean to a demon – the opposite to how they were once paired back in season 4. Of course, he mostly just obsesses about how to kill Abaddon, while Crowley is the one who Rubys him.

I mean like, yeah, she’s set a trap to get them there to get Crowley so it’s technically not even about them, except she totally makes it about Dean (while Sam is off trying to fight 3 huge demons single-handed, which I admire :P)

* * *

> ABADDON  
> So appreciate you boys coming when I call. I think that’s what I like most about you Winchesters. You’re so obedient. And suicidally stupid. I like that, too.

She’s met them like 3 times. I feel like she’s nailed it, sure (if we swap “stupid” for “reckless because low self-worth x heroic burden is a terrible combination”) but I kind of feel she knows Henry better than them by a mile, having hung out with him incognito, so I can’t help feeling she’s commenting on their family history here when she says “you Winchesters” >.> 

Also putting a dark side to “I always come when you call”

> ABADDON  
> Oh. Well… you know, I’ve loved this body since the moment I first saw it. You’re the perfect vessel, Dean.

I somehow feel like this has been talked over a LOT for all the future arc stuff especially once we get past the Mark of Cain stuff to Amara and how that recontextualises the whole arc (I remember back in season 9 the meta I read was more about how Dean had been Michael’s vessel and that was never realised) and I wonder if Abaddon is reacting to the potential in Dean to hold the Darkness – it seems to be some sort of cosmic burden of his and the comments about him in season 11 especially towards the end ring true riiiight down his story back to the start - but I guess anyway collecting it for the sake of what I seem to be interested in this rewatch for Cas, Sam and Dean all being threatened with possession within 2 episodes (although only Sam actually having it done to him) and both Cas and Dean being singled out for having good vessels. While Sam in this arc is “duct tape and safety pins” and in a way… I mean like yeah he too is a “perfect vessel” because he was as fine-tuned to be Lucifer’s vessel as Dean was for Michael. Maybe it’s just they’re all being used for the ~wrong~ purpose: Dean with Abaddon/the Darkness, Sam with the wrong angel who seems in the lore you can find about him IRL to be a knock-off Lucifer, and Cas just threatening to be possessed by another angel at all when he’s already an angel in a vessel

* * *

> DEAN  
> (Mockingly) Ooh. Well, I gotta tell you, between you and me, it is a horror show up there.

Abaddon goes on to give him some suggestions for how she thinks she could make it worse, and I’ve seen people compare that to his trauma for what he did in Hell – and that she might be underestimating him there. I think it’s telling they have Dean say something like this before the descent arc really starts though, just because I think it’s fairly safe to say if you make an assessment of how he’s probably doing based off the previous 8 seasons, it’s not a good prospect… Again, though, since this is right at the start of the season, a reminder that Dean has ongoing issues – stuff that’s been messing him up stretching back decades – is weirdly honest for him just because the response if asked casually always tends to be “I’m fine” and saving admitting how not-fine he is for threatening even something like Abaddon wouldn’t like to share a head with him…

I dunno, Dean in this weird precipice before the real descent arc fascinates me. They’re building him up ready for it, and so we get some interesting character stuff.

* * *

Anyway Gadreel comes out to play. Suddenly those demons aren’t too scary :P

While we’re paralleling back to other season openers, you can’t forget that while you’re impatiently waiting for Cas to show up in 4x01, Sam is off displaying scary new powers in a messed up diner – full of demons that got fucked up by an angel they had no idea if it was friend or foe yet.

* * *

… It actually throws me off when Dean calls him “Ezekiel” because I’ve got so used to him being Gadreel :P

* * *

I love how huge and off-kilter he is here. Not like it’s hard to make him look tall.

> ZEKE!SAM  
> They were going to kill him, Dean.
> 
> DEAN  
> Ezekiel? The hell did you do?
> 
> ZEKE!SAM  
> I was protecting your brother. I thought that was what you wanted.

I think he’s got quite protective of Sam already, tbh, just based on what he shouldn’t have been evesdropping on but totally has been. He’s heard snippets of Sam’s backstory now and if nothing else felt Sam’s guilt re: letting Lucifer free, which of course he relates to. It’s almost like he backs off behind Dean’s wishes for Sam’s safety to explain himself, while he’s starting down that path that never ends well for angels, of getting attached to the humans they’re protecting.

I mean there’s a lot of irritated  _how do you nearly die every single week I’m trying to stay hidden in here_  in the moments where he heals Sam over and over and over while rolling his eyes, but at least in this case I think there was a panic reaction to the scenario just on Sam’s sake, based on the way he says it when Dean first walks in the door, followed by a clarification which  _sounds_  like it’s just saying the same point over again, but subtly changes the motivation he’s conveying for why he did it.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Yeah, it’s just that, uh… this is on me. I was the one who talked Sam out of boarding up Hell. Okay? So every demon deal, every kill that they make… well, you’re looking at the person who let it happen.

Ugh maybe it’s just because of the end of season 11 but Dean’s world on his shoulders burden feels really terrible when it comes up right now >.> Grimly noting Dabb piling more on top of Dean and moving on :P

* * *

… cuz the next lines aren’t completely talked to death :P

Quite amused by the fact the “who do you love” montage steered pretty clear of Dean and Sam, staying on Cas and Crowley for the most part. In one angle, you have Gadreel bringing up love as a motivation and Dean shooting that down as a motivation.

> ZEKE!SAM  
> But it is why I said yes.

This is weirdly blurred between Gadreel speaking on Sam’s behalf (“yes” being a very loaded word around them) but also given it’s an angel talking about saying “yes” to something, puts a weight on his decision to help Dean, as it’s phrased in the same way almost as accepting possession itself. Gadreel seems almost more like sworn to his service for the sake of the protection he benefits from, and when Dean grumbles about how that could “go south” he tries hard to reassure Dean that it won’t and that he’s trustworthy, which I think he is desperately trying to believe.

Since it’s Dabb to Dabb here to 9x10 where we find out more Gadreel backstory, I’d otherwise have speculated this might not have been thought of in all the details yet, but to go back to Gadreel saying he agreed to help because of love, we have the obvious that he’s been taken by the love he sees Dean expressing for Sam in trying to save him… but last episode, Gadreel was drawn to Dean after hearing just his name and no request about his brother, but  _did_  have knowledge of him and Cas, as if he got his gossip from angels, it would be filtered through a Cas and angels skewed perspective. And the angels sure seem to have some ideas about Dean n Cas :P We know in 9x10 that Gadreel had his own boyfriend so he legitimately could have initially, before he ever met Sam, have agreed to do the whole thing because love because Dean n Cas… I did say while commenting on Dean and Gadreel’s little holy fire scene how important it felt to me that that moment was all about Dean and Cas…

I mean, probably the whole “love… and love” thing affects this from both sides, but you know. Just looking at what Gadreel sees as we go along :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> This is nuts. I mean, you’re Sam, but you’re not Sam, and normally he’s the one I’m talking to about all this stuff.

Eey no chick flick moments.

Also: that blurring between Gadreel and Sam, which I was just talking about.

* * *

> DEAN  
> I’m trusting you, Zeke. I just gotta hope that you’re one of the good guys.
> 
> ZEKE!SAM  
> I am. (beat) But I suppose that is what a bad guy would say. (beat) Dean Winchester, you are doing the right thing.

I think it’s more like what someone who really thinks they have something to prove about being the good guy would say >.> Moral complexity is a good thing for like, eight and a half episodes, and then a terrible thing :P

Also: “you are doing the right thing” sounds like every word is being hammered in, and I guess works alongside “I did what I had to do” because again, moral complexity: in truth all these decisions are born from pure desperation and moral compromise (works well for like, eight and a half episodes for Dean) but yeah trying to justify them as “doing the right thing” doesn’t go very far. “I did what I had to do” seems more honest at least, for Dean to believe. I guess Gadreel might earnestly think that right now because he’s both a bajillion years old and also Bambi finding his legs.

* * *

The funniest part is that Dean just “leaves” Sam unconscious up against the wall, and Sam wakes up and Dean is just, like, chilling, tidying up.

I mean next episode Dean does it again while distracted by Cas?

…

You know in 11x16 where Sam just drags Dean into the room with him and leaves him propped uncomfortably against the fridge?

That’s probably revenge for all the times Gadreel left him in an undignified heap somewhere or other

* * *

> SAM  
> You killed three demons? Alone?
> 
> DEAN  
> I took ‘em by surprise. Got a little messy, I got a little lucky. [he helps SAM up off the floor] Oh, and, uh, I’m awesome, so there’s that.
> 
> SAM  
> Jeez. You are pretty damn awesome.

That’s like, nothing compared to 9x11.

Okay to be fair I just counted on my fingers and that’s like 2-ish episodes longer than the flip from “omg no a whole vampire nest!?” in 7x22 to “no biggie just killing everything in a vampire nest” in 8x05

Dabb is the only one here who has any respect for what a normal number of monsters someone can kill in one go is. Edlund and Robbie running around being like “Nah but what if Dean killed, like,  _everything_.”

…

Okay I guess the point is that they should only really be able to barely fight one demon one on one – and usually do better only with trickery etc rather than being trapped in a room. Making Dean bust out the practically superhuman moves before he even gets the Mark but tapping his own inner darkness to fight like that is a pretty powerful moment (oh gosh I am so close to First Born and there’s only 2 episodes between it and here that I see bogging me down like this stretch of plot episodes from 8x19>9x02)

* * *

The prune juice detail kills me every time

* * *

I feel like with all the coming and going from the Bunker and Kevin trying to leave there should be a parallel to 9x22’s ending just because Dabb… at the very least here Kevin is leaving and they don’t want him to, in 9x22 Gadreel shows up and Dean is not impressed… Standing in the same place and all

Eh, it’s flimsy. Maybe watching 9x22 might make me think of more, if I ever get there :P

* * *

Actually I think this may be the one and only time Dean manages to give Kevin the pep talk

Well this and 7x21 I guess

Bookends to their relationship in a way even if Kevin continues hanging around drinking their coffee and prune juice for a few more weeks.

* * *

> KEVIN  
> He said my mom’s alive.
> 
> […]
> 
> DEAN  
> Well… if she is alive, then she’s dead. In every way that matters, she’s dead, Kevin, I’m sorry. I know you’re dying to bolt, man. I get it. But out that door, it’s demons, and it’s angels, and they would all love to get their hands on a prophet. So even with Crowley here, this is still the safest place for you. It just is. And we need you, man.
> 
> KEVIN  
> Because I’m useful.
> 
> DEAN  
> Because you’re family. 

Maybe Kevin doesn’t listen to the pep talks because they make him cry and he hates that

It’s horrible listening to this pep talk because everything about it is wrong up until the “we need you” stuff. The phrasing of this makes me feel more grumpy that Kevin is used to validate Cas’s place as family (Dean goes on to re-list the current living members of TFW with Cas too all included in this bracket), without Cas hearing it, but Kevin expressing the unspoken anxiety about how Cas is certainly later developed to feel about being “needed” – 8x22, also Dabb, had Dean lash out at Cas over his usefulness, and of course season 11 finally gets back to this and 11x23 f i n a l l y puts this to rest for Cas by giving him another “you’re family” he can cling to that wasn’t wrenched out of a bad situation… But yeah to go back to Kevin, it’s really just adding someone else’s pain to him that he can then die for to represent that since they’re not killing off the leads any time soon (uh… for good)

In the meantime, Dean seems to be partially emotionally blackmailing Kevin to keep him in the safety of the bunker out of concern for him, is continuing to deny someone a chance to save their mother (ouch) and generally saying a whole lot of crap that will  _haunt_  him in a few episodes:

> DEAN  
> After all the crap we’ve been through, after all the good that you’ve done… man, if you don’t think that we would die for you… I don’t know what to tell you.

And I’ve never really liked this moment since seeing the whole season, for how it’s so horrendously corrupted by what comes next. It’s one of those things where when Dean says he’s poison, it’s conversations like this that are probably directly haunting him – the desperation he has to keep the family together is his oldest theme (to go back to season 1) and as I was saying about that moment in 1x22, season 9 finally starts using that dark fear Dean had about what he would do to keep the family together, and actually explodes something out of it. So Kevin being included in the family is again a death warrant for other reasons.

And like, up next is Cas going to take a smaller fall for this and get banished to the Gas n Sip, but that’s right after Dean has been preaching this to Kevin with dialogue borrowed from stuff Dean says to Cas… Eurgh. :P But it’s showing that this family theme is already fracturing even while Kevin is still safe under their roof, so Cas’s banishment is  _another_ sign of Kevin’s looming death.

* * *

If both scenarios weren’t depressing enough already on their own :P

* * *

> SAM  
> Nothing. It’s just… what Tracy said about me, she wasn’t wrong.
> 
> DEAN puts the glasses down on the table and sits down across from SAM.
> 
> DEAN  
> Sam, listen to me. You have helped a hell of a lot more people than you have hurt. So all of that… that was then. Okay? Here’s to now.

In lighter news, I’m pretty sure Gadreel is hastily looking up the way to hug someone from inside, and I think briefly entertains a thought that Dean would accept him and be forgiving if he came clean about being Gadreel not Ezekiel… which of course is probably shaken next episode after the whole Cas banishing situation putting him back on super weird footing with him, but you know, in the here and now if he’s snooping on their conversations (he did say he knew everything in Sam’s head) he’s got to be feeling weirdly positive about it all.

Like this:

> SAM  
> Honestly, um, I feel better than I have in a long time. I mean, I realize it’s crazy out there, and we have trouble coming for us, but I look around and I see friends, and family. I am happy with my life, for the first time in… forever. (beat) I-I am, I really am. It’s just, things are… things are good.

(FOR SOME REASON I THOUGHT THAT WAS IN 9x04 TALKING TO CHARLIE. WHOOPS)

Okay so yeah no need to be mysterious about it. Aside from the whopping great dramatic irony (eurgh it’s my favourite thing and yet I hate experiencing it :P) of Sam saying all this right before their world starts going to crap again, I’ve always been fond of the idea not just that Sam has a new lease on life, but the  _reason_  he’s, you know, up and walking in the first place  _also_  has a new lease on life and is pretty thrilled. I mean, what if Gadreel was stewing on Tracy’s comments just as much as Sam, influencing him from the inside, and feeling his OWN epic guilt complex. Sam later describes to Cas the sort of presence he was experiencing. So soon after everything, when I think that was his first full day of being possessed, Sam would have no idea or expectation that any thoughts weren’t his own, even if he began to feel weird about it later, or only with his own hindsight could examine his unexpected mood swings over this period.

He sounds genuinely surprised at how happy he actually is and thinking of Dean telling Abaddon it’s a horror show in his head, Sam isn’t any less messed up by what they’ve experienced in the past, so his own genuine contentment is very hard won. (And I guess that line suggested some back and forth between possessor and possess-ee) So that “first time in forever” seems to be the suggestion that Sam isn’t really experiencing Sam emotions (and is another one of those alarming Sam revelations where he just casually admits he’s never felt truly happy with his life before? Ouch???)

Argh don’t mind me, I have a long-running affection for stories about possession long before this show ever existed. An actual exploration of one of the strangest dynamics you can only get in fiction of this sort of thing always interests me.

And I mean at least now for like 3 minutes, the fact they can share happiness is a really nice thing?

Obviously it gets much worse

* * *

*Dean takes his first drink of the season and looks like he knows it*

* * *

> DEAN  
> Crap. We’re living in a freaking sitcom

Me @ Carver era

I’m glad someone can admit it after how nonsensical this episode was :P


	3. 9x03

… in a meta kind of way, it’s quite amusing how this season of bad decisions operates on so many levels, i guess? 

This is the only episode I have to put a “for ts” tag on so I mean. That tag has the rest of my feelings on this episode in it.

* * *

My first thought with the recap from “Metatron is trying to fix heaven” “he’s trying to break it” lines of dialogue being thrown is, is my long-standing theory that the angel side of the story is a series of drafts from Metatron’s typewriter, all season long, hence it being a bit of a dog’s breakfast.

Because Metatron sucks as a writer. He’s said so himself.

In season 9′s case, we’ve lost Edlund to work his magic 6x20 or 7x21 style, but in this season I’m strongly of the opinion Robbie did his own salvage job on the season with 9x18, albeit in his own subtle yet ridiculous way. Re-examining the season and especially the angel story line and the stuff that Metatron would have been interested in shaping (he didn’t seem to account for the Mark of Cain coming into play for example) as directly influenced by him means there’s actually an interesting perspective at work where you can take this viewpoint, and looking at the first half of the season through Metatron’s eyes on these arcs (up to Captives, which I think when he lost control of the story yet again, BECAUSE of Cas YET AGAIN, spooked him into going after Cas and starting the version of the story we saw him writing on screen)… I wouldn’t say it redeems the episodes but it offers a way to read the season in hindsight in a way I find fascinating.

So let’s try and blame this episode on Metatron, courtesy of Robbie down the far end of the season trying to un-fuck this. :P

* * *

Yes, if the first 2 episodes didn’t tip you off, my absolute obsession with perspective and point of view and narrative in this season is Robbie’s fault. :P It’s like me flipping out about script/story references in season 6 courtesy of Edlund.

* * *

I’ve often wondered…

Do the writers get to pick the stuff in the recap? Because I feel like the length of that recap exhaustively detailing minutiae such as Meg calling Cas “Clarence” or trying to justify the reaper thing with a random line of a reaper yelling “I can find you!!” (to… someone dying… in that very specific context… oh don’t fight it, Lizzy) has a certain feel of the writers before anything starts :P It’s a full minute of the episode but on the other hand this is one of those ones that clocks in above the 40 minute mark when it’s all said and done.

* * *

Ways to not be this episode 1: there’s like… 3 scenes before the title card. You know, one scene all by itself could have said literally everything that just happened without a word: that one where Cas is picking litter (just stick in a much longer establishing shot) and then he finds the obviously angel-murdered priests. Like, bam, done.

* * *

> SAM  
> Yeah. Woke up, went for a run - beautiful sunrise. Anyways, cleaned up, went and got breakfast, grabbed you real bacon and eggs, extra grease, not even gonna argue.

You guys have a kitchen. Just freakin’ man up and buy groceries already before you have a heart attack

If we stand by my theory that Sam’s in a good mood because Gadreel is, it’s technically his fault Sam’s plying Dean with greasy food and he doesn’t even realise why he’s feeling thankful towards him.

* * *

This face is worth it:

Also the snortlaugh at Dean missing the Gadreel transition and said angel trying to give him an early start on the heart attack by casually replying “possessed by an angel”

* * *

> SAM  
> What? Why do you look so worried?
> 
> DEAN  
> Let’s see. There’s Cas, who I told to haul ass here. That was days ago. He’s still out there. Um, there’s you.

I do like Dean listing Cas as a top priority

I’m assuming this is the morning after 9x02 so he’s basically just crashed and slept on it since then, and wakes up the next morning like, okay, drinking my coffee… why has Cas not shown up yet. 

Not sure of intent because this episode is wonky as hell, directing-wise AND writing, but him standing alone in the Bunker looking around and seeing no one (I assume Kevin is crashed out somewhere and sleeping for like a week :P I don’t even remember if this episode has an explanation for him not being in it) could also be not just wondering where Sam is, but a visual of his loneliness and isolation, and the lack of people around him emphasising Cas’s absence in his domestic morning routine. His insistence to keep mentioning Cas like with his season 11 panic about Cas, draws that empty space into being about Cas as he’s the one who Dean is missing.

* * *

> EZEKIEL  
> I have news. I’ve picked up chatter among the angels. Not all are wandering around in confusion.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, some of ‘em are after Cas.

Dean being really  _really_ concerned about Cas. Actually he’s being generally neurotic about Sam and Cas’s wellbeing but his instant thought when Gadreel says this is to be worried about Cas some more, so I guess his characterisation today is just mother hen Dean. :P I suppose since we get these episodes so fast on each other’s heels, we’re sort of getting a real time of Dean’s feelings about everything… On the Cas front, Dean was pretty chill last episode because Cas had said he was fine the previous episode, but now a few days down the line, we have that sense of worry and loneliness that emphasises that Cas might not be fine, and now Dean’s starting to get anxious.

* * *

(If we assume that belatedly Metatron was making everything happen with his magic typewriter, I wonder if he was behind the witch hunt against Cas or if he made sure Gadreel – who he seems to know all about later when they first meet, and he probably is keeping an eye on wtf the Winchesters are up to – heard this chatter and felt compelled to interrupt this awkward conversation and give Dean a heads up to spur him to look harder for Cas. I like the idea of Metatron  _protecting_  Cas out of his own twisted interests – if nothing else because he weirdly and consistently seems to have been genuinely rooting for Cas to have a good story when he’s telling him to find a wife in 8x23 or frustrated and disappointed with him in 11x06 and revealing he knew about the Gas n Sip job so clearly HAD been keeping an eye out over this time… he probably felt like he was being a benevolent God and Cas as a human he “made” was his creation in a way, which is why he was so grumpy about Cas not being human right, or going back to be an angel… I actually can’t remember everything he’s said to Cas about this very well and I’m way too excited to rewatch the end of the season with season 11 hindsight to slather all over it.)

* * *

Filed under minor things that bother me about this episode:

> DEAN  
> Let’s see. There’s Cas, who I told to haul ass here. That was days ago. He’s still out there. Um, there’s you.
> 
> SAM  
> Me? I feel great.
> 
> DEAN  
> I’m sure you do, but, Sam, you went through the trials. Okay, that put a big strain on you. I just think it’s better if you took it easy, you know, and didn’t act like you were-
> 
> EZEKIEL takes over.
> 
> […]
> 
> EZEKIEL switches back to SAM.
> 
> SAM  
> I mean, you know, Cas is human now. It’s gonna take him a lot longer to travel.
> 
> DEAN  
> (To himself)  
> I’m gonna get whiplash.

Yeah actually Dean that’s a fair response to Sam randomly changing the subject from himself back to Cas mid-sentence.

* * *

… Wasn’t the actor who played Bartholomew on Parks and Rec and it was somehow more hilarious for knowing he played a minor suit-wearing villain on this show?

The worst thing about this scene is probably that they use the same stock photo of heavenly clouds for Buddy’s weird angel farming youtube series as Cas’s phone background

  


([x](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fdisplayimage.php%3Falbum%3D199%26pid%3D245435%23top_display_media&t=NWQ1NWRhYzk5ZmUyNDRlMDMxMmIzNDI1NzMzYjBkZWJmODNlNDI0Myx6UVJOZHYyaA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F147018769198%2F9x03-rewatch-in-a-meta-kind-of-way-its-quite&m=1)) i guess it’s efficient use of symbolism??

* * *

I was about to say it seems like a really bad idea to put 2 angels in someone at once as Bartholomew seems to do here, like, no wonder she exploded. On the other hand, Casifer.

I wonder if it damages the angel to explode like that – it’s left unclear despite being similar to other times angels have been intentionally exploded on screen as a permanent death, but it does make me wonder if there’s a price to pay for taking unsuitable vessels. I guess if angels connect with every inch of their vessel on a molecular level then ripping them apart damages the angel too, but  _most_  superficial damage can be healed as long as it’s not THAT disruptive. Like, only really thorough explodings cause enough damage to the angel to kill them.

Still, considering that, makes you wonder about Lucifer burning through his vessel when he had Nick – he needed Sam to be strong enough for the fight he wanted, and that makes me think that the vessel can cause some serious damage to the angel as much as the angel is damaging the vessel… I’m still curious as well that Cas said that being possessed by Lucifer was burning him up as well as he showed no signs of it, so I was expecting damage to his grace/power instead… All he did was walk around or sit in the car in 11x23 before he was banished, but I am very curious about how he’ll be in season 12. Makes me wonder if the speculation was right that Lucifer wasn’t burning through Jimmy’s meatsuit because he had to go through Cas first – if Cas possesses every inch of the vessel then Lucifer does the same, on like a next layer up of this weird stack of pancakes, then the meatsuit is protected because Lucifer has to go through Cas first to get to it. And apparently that didn’t hurt him… I guess making it the easiest ride he ever had, since even Sam still had to drink demon blood to accommodate him. Maybe though, Casifer could kick Sam!Lucifer’s butt depending on how much the vessel is a weakness in turn to the angel possessing it…

* * *

*the things you think while not paying attention to 9x03*

* * *

I feel like there might be a parallel with Cas and his terrible graffiti bus he goes to sleep in and the bus from last episode Abaddon stole all hose meatsuits in, although he’s not in any threat of possession, just run of the mill threats to his autonomy and life >.>

* * *

I mean, all else aside, the angel just stopping and letting Cas react to being slightly stabbed is kind of bad writing/directing/what have you. I find it hard to cheer for Cas doing any BAMF fighting when the angel is just  _standing_  there nonplussed… Also like I know they’re all looking for Cas but dropping random pharmacist angel in there seems weird even for this episode (she says suddenly remembering as it continues playing barely heeded in the corner of my eye, that for some reason they decided Dean wouldn’t get the reference about Clarence) … anyway there’s just so much stuff happening at random >.>

* * *

Peeps were paralleling Amara at the end of 11x06 and Cas here with his random walk though humanity on a crowded street. Or, well, compare and contrast since she was acting a little more unleashed and he just looks terrified and sad and overwhelmed. Point is, 11x09 I guess kind of calls back to this moment too with that bit where Dean’s being offered a hotdog in the park (surrounded by random humanity again) and Amara pops up. In this case Cas has to pick between hot dog and protection so he WON’T be found, but for Dean it’s too late and his scary supernatural pursuer zeroes in on him even as he’s contemplating buying a hotdog :P

This creates quite a strange but compelling collection of references to me, as the defining theme is humanity between all 3 scenes. Taken with the first half of season 11’s romantic Dean x Amara stuff before it was backpedalled, the use of that as a love triangle to Destiel, THIS season’s “in love with humanity” thing, and the connection with humanity to fast food anyway (hot dogs also featuring in 10x09 which had a slip up in that department, 10x01 and Dean complaining if the Darkness even knew what a cheeseburger was, and the very obvious burger thing from 9x23 which basically underlined forever this Carver era association)… and there’s, like, SOMETHING here.

Probably more relevant to the framing in season 11 of the love triangle/conflict/whatever, but both things link back to this episode and I will probably not think to talk about it later/outside of this post :P

* * *

… How do the angels find out about Cas killing the angel they sicced on him slower than the Winchesters? I mean like, sure, they have the internet, but angels… are angels? :P

That conversation WASN’T the one that dragged reapers into this episode so we’re 15 minutes in and we have more alternating back and forth to the bad guys to worry about?

* * *

Actually, small complaint in the grand scheme, but this episode repeats SO MUCH. Right from the cold open it’s been badly-pruned. We’ve had Sam and Dean repeat their dialogue over and over. We’ve had the same sort of conversations from the villains over and over, and Cas is  _repeating_  his walk through random scary humanity being overwhelmed by it all now, right down to being menaced by the hot dog guy again. 

* * *

Before I dump it from my brain’s short term memory reserves again, just thinking because of that bit where Cas gets distracted by boobs while walking, that the second worst thing about this episode is just the way it’s completely and utterly surface level and the effect that has on it is probably why the most worst thing about it feels SO bad. 

Like, the show is fundamentally a queer text in tropes and themes and character stuff for  _every_ major character. It’s that specific type of storytelling that makes it deeper, is where much of the cleverness in the storytelling lies, and a good chunk of why the show is so relatable. I’m way too tired to try and wake up my dormant academic side right now but at the very least, look at the type of fandom it’s accumulated and the way everyone interacts with it and how they see themselves in the characters is such a powerful thing. The way the story is told and the stuff the characters face just  _resonates_  with people and what they struggle with and feel (and as all the other types of stuff like AKF etc show, for all sorts of important other reasons too that people might fall into the show and get heavily invested in the characters) I’d say almost every episode of the what 230 odd at least scrapes by on themes or story tropes when there’s nothing else deeper to read in the characterisation and language and other such things. I’d say you can expect the odd flat episode here and there from writers who don’t get it, but most of those episodes can get swallowed up in MotW shenanigans or main plot stuff. 

This episode, though, should have been a proper journey for Cas, and a deeper exploration of  _everything_ about how he’s relating to being human, and interacting with other humans as one of them, while being hunted by his old family, and the new found family that desperately wants to take him trying to find him first, and yet there’s just no substance to it at all – neither for Cas, and maybe more I actually get more worried about what it says of how Buckleming relate to being human, because it kind of feels like they don’t and they’re writing this episode for an alien trying to explain to him what being human is like from their limited perspective… :P

I mean if you follow my blog you know I rarely respond to anons who are expressing feeling robbed about characterisation as if I feel we’ve completely missed out, as I’m often quite chill with at least accepting the wider twists and turns the show takes, and interpretation and analysis can drag out all the stuff that seems to be missing to my eyes, but this is one of those very rare cases (like… 2 of them :P) where I just feel completely robbed by an episode when it comes to some stuff

Like, oh hey, strawman who has just seen this episode for the first time, would you believe this show happily lets one of its writers undeniably make God Himself bisexual? (strawman: gee that seems awfully imaginative compared to what I just watched, are you sure we’re watching the same shows? Me: not really……)

And let’s be clear actually I’m not saying Cas should have had some big gay adventure in this episode, I’m saying it’s completely silly to think that confirming he farts now is the storytelling they want to be doing. Like guess what, aside from random pets in the same room as the TV, you are writing entirely for other human beings, we get how bodily functions happen… (Okay the pets fart too but they don’t have a concept of poor storytelling so really they’re ahead of the game here) And also I’m not saying they should have not included the boobs moment just because it’s such a rubbish heteronormative moment and I want him safely undefined forever because shipping reasons or whatever… (I mean… Megstiel… the ship has sailed on there being  _no_  heteronormative reading of Cas 3 seasons ago at this point)

I literally just mean if they weren’t going to do anything clever with Cas and his perilous journey of self-identity, aka, something that a lot of people could really have related to, especially given all the themes which in other episodes work so WELL about Cas and his struggles with identity and family (and 9x06, by a writer who  _gets_  it, does 90% of the human!Cas heavy lifting as 9x01 had to deal with plot stuff and set up what the other writers should have run with), than one good scene in the church dealing with his faith and a throwaway comment that he’s realised he’ll actually die at some point, then they’ve wasted their episode because they’re not  _doing_  anything with Cas.

And his conclusions about what he’s learned about being human at the end of this episode, and the lack of material in 9x09 (since 9x06 doesn’t seem to have much effect on that one despite being the human!Cas episode we actually NEEDED and like how those other episodes should have at least  _tried_  to be…) just go to show how Buckleming kind of come up empty on any meaningful reason for Cas to have ever been human in the first place. Dabb in 9x10 and Robbie in 9x11 show effects of it after the fact which is good, but Buckleming hog half the whole number of human!Cas episodes, and they don’t know how the fuck to tell a story about him. Crowley gets a better arc while locked in a dungeon because over that space of time, Dabb, Robbie and Berens are the ones who drop by to check on him. I mean I think he’s in only one scene in the Dorothy episode and it’s probably got more meaningful characterisation than Cas in this episode :P

Like, tl:dr, this is the most gratuitous waste of a plot arc that’s ever happened to a character, and thank goodness for 9x06, truly from the bottom of my heart.

* * *

All that aside, in-universe, Metatron is pretty pissed at the characterisation too, which uplifts my spirits (I can’t remember which episodes he complains about it aside from 11x06 although I feel like he could not possibly have got to the end of season 9 without rolling his eyes at Cas… on the other hand looking at what I just said, the thought of Berens throwing shade on the human!Cas arc fills me with joy)

* * *

And now for something completely different: I do actually like the church scene because Buckleming vs faith is an enduring thing, and the one good, complex and meaningful thing in this episode is this discussion about it.

They probably scouted the location here like “what is your most  _angelly_  church?” and then added some more angels.

Look at Cas looking sad because he can’t help humanity :(

That is the face of someone who would have flown right off to fix this guy after hearing the woman’s prayer, if only he could. :(

(” You can’t save everyone, my friend… though, you try.” *quotes Cas to Cas*)

* * *

> WOMAN  
> I guess that’s why we pray. When you get dealt such a bad hand sometimes, you need something stronger than yourself.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> That’s a wonderful idea, but…
> 
> CASTIEL sighs and turns away, looking at an angel in one of the stained glass windows.
> 
> WOMAN  
> What?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> What if you were to find out that no one is listening? That God had pretty much left, that Heaven had gone out of business? What would you do?
> 
> WOMAN  
> But that’s not possible.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I think it’s completely possible.
> 
> WOMAN  
> You’re missing the point. It’s not possible because I have my faith.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> But when I tell you the truth-
> 
> WOMAN  
> Your truth, not mine. Your lack of faith doesn’t cancel what I believe. That’s not how it works. You know… I think you might feel better if you tried it my way. Someone is listening. 

Anyway, I really like Cas having explained to him the difference between just being a part of the shape of the universe because it just  _is_  in this world, and how humans, who can’t know these things, have taken it all on faith all this time. I think it’s almost quite subversive to have the angel who seems to objectively know how fucked everything is with the universe, with God gone and Heaven broken (and doesn’t he know it) be told actually, no, that’s not how it works. In a way faith is sort of shown as not “for” angels etc since it has to be an absolute law for them to believe – and that was in the season 4- 5 characterisation, especially in season 4, where the angels seemed to take faith for obedience or acquiescence to the grand plan as much as anything. This is a much more free will compatible way of looking at faith, and it’s being given to Cas as a human now to say to him, you don’t have to follow that old order any more – you make for yourself what you want to believe/follow. And of course it’s more complex because Cas KNOWS Heaven is a corrupt and broken system, and he’s lost all personal faith in God as a character way back in season five, with further kicking taken on that point in season 6. Since it can’t JUST be about faith for Cas, it is actually challenging how he defines and understands himself, as well as giving him the perspective from humanity looking up at the angels as he never has before.

* * *

(Still a 3 minute scene in a  _long_  episode)

* * *

Like now we’re back at Bartholomew’s office, for round 3 or 4 of discussions on how to catch Cas, since we clearly have not have enough of these yet to know that Bart’s the villain and wants to catch Cas.

* * *

Mmm I love the smell of mangled reaper lore in the morning.

* * *

Mmm the smell of Sam and Dean repeating lore they know completely by heart to each other like hey remember how angel possession is supposed to work.

“Angels can’t possess someone without permission, right?” Sam asks, temporarily forgetting the entire plot of season 5

(while currently possessed without his permission)

* * *

Aaah, I forgot that the real April gave Cas PB&J sandwiches. She’s presumably still normal real April, anyway. I choose to believe that >.>

Since I normally go around willingly forgetting this episode, it does put 9x11 in context with Cas wanting to make himself a PB&J sandwich, and feeling sad that it doesn’t taste the same. It was offered to him out of genuine kindness and to him must represent the goodness of humanity, way more than his horrible experience with April later which Buckleming kept going back to, Robbie picks out the one  _nice_  thing about this encounter for him to reflect on, since, as I was saying, they get the monopoly on defining Cas’s human experience. He has a 3 second encounter with the real, kind April, and so that’s what Robbie leaps on, rather than choosing a path to remind us over and over of what else to do with her.

That’s quite an interesting thing as well because this season of course, stretched and fraying at the seams surface level is that Cas just loves humanity that much (like, ignoring 9x23 and Metatron actually telling us straight up that it isn’t just this :P) but the Cas x humanity thread does have a lot to commend itself just because that’s not exactly a false lead that Cas  _doesn’t_ love humanity. I think it’s lovely that he’s profoundly affected by this moment. As well as, in 9x11, it then has Cas describing a disconnect between himself and this symbol, that it doesn’t taste as he remembered and he’s sort of feeling too huge to comprehend it  _just_  as a sandwich any more. Because I think there’s a real yearning in Cas for the “human things” (and 10x01-3 when he’s sick and where that line comes from, he slips closer to humanity as his grace fails, and again we see him experiencing “human things” in a small measure, again, against his will). That yearning to me says more than anything else that I think Cas should end up human or that he would want to be, if only he could allow himself to really contemplate it. For the love of a PB&J sandwich :P

And to go right back to being a grubby Destiel shipper, this is not the only 2 times peanut butter is mentioned in this stretch of episodes. In 9x07 Dean’s arrested as a kid for stealing peanut butter to make sandwiches for Sam, which aligns him with the side of humanity Cas fell in love with: the selfless peanut butter-giving side of humanity :P So a way to link Dean to Humanity appears in the first 11 episodes…

* * *

In this next scene I’m laughing about “who wore it better, Cas or Lucifer” for the Drowned Rat look

I think Lucifer wins by a clear mile mostly for the bouncing off a submarine story

Aah happier times lie ahead

* * *

I just noticed you can spot April’s oranges of death pretty much as soon as they’re in her house and talking. I mention “fresh fruit of doom” a lot and it’s often mixed fruit, and apples, but in this episode it’s actually oranges!

I’ve been procrastinating so have some links @justanotheridijiton sent  me while I have been busy not watching the episode all week:

[http://thestake.org/2014/05/09/why-you-should-never-eat-oranges-if-youre-a-fictional-character/](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fthestake.org%2F2014%2F05%2F09%2Fwhy-you-should-never-eat-oranges-if-youre-a-fictional-character%2F&t=N2FiNmJlNjM4NmZmZjUwMjgwY2QzMWExZDkxYjVkODUyNDhiZjRlYix6UVJOZHYyaA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F147018769198%2F9x03-rewatch-in-a-meta-kind-of-way-its-quite&m=1)

[http://uproxx.com/tv/a-brief-history-of-oranges-and-how-they-foreshadow-death/](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fuproxx.com%2Ftv%2Fa-brief-history-of-oranges-and-how-they-foreshadow-death%2F&t=ZjZiZGE1ZjA3NDBmMWZiMzRjMDE1OGIwOWEzOGQ5NGFjOWJiODk2YSx6UVJOZHYyaA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F147018769198%2F9x03-rewatch-in-a-meta-kind-of-way-its-quite&m=1)

* * *

oh wait I forgot to mention the “dark hair blue eyes” thing from the previous scene where Dean is describing Cas.

Uh, well, he does that because he thinks Cas is dreamy, and then the guy is like ??? and Sam clarifies with actual useful information and then the bloke is like “oh right that guy”

… there’s not much to say tbh :P

* * *

Oh and this about the psychology behind Season Bad Decisions:

<http://neven-ebrez.tumblr.com/post/67767300595>

* * *

… because this episode has so little going on I’m running out of anything to say that isn’t from posts that I’ve seen forever and a day ago :P

* * *

> APRIL  
> Funny. You don’t look like the knife-fight type

… I know she’s possessed by now but since we don’t know that yet, I guess part of the symbolism of sticking the wrong label on things. Cas pretty much  _is_  the show’s knife fight guy.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> No, vanity. I thought I was more important, more effective than I am, that I could… fix everything. Now all I can do is keep running.

This pretty much sums up Cas’s life >.> Season 6 is lurking in here too.

Special mention for 11x23 and the Beer Run with Dean immediately getting a word in to say that Cas did the right thing and so on because this is consistent characterisation with how he seems to feel in season 7 as a result of 6, and now he’s feeling the same in 9… So of course he takes another gamble in 11 which isn’t even really a pride thing at all, except that he wants to be useful but he’s already so beaten down by that point it’s in a very different emotional territory… Anyway Dean makes it clear in the immediate aftermath that Cas did what was needed and even if it didn’t work, his attempt to “fix everything” that time around was justified. Considering the way Cas has emotionally crashed and burned twice on this point already (and was so easily lead by Metatron 2 seasons in a row in 8 and 9 for his desire to fix Heaven in 8x22 and 9x18 as a result of season 6 and 8 respectively) I guess it’s quite important that there’s already been a scene trying to protect Cas from a third emotional slump. I mean he’s still going into season 12 messed up because he was in SUCH a bad way in season 11 but… I dunno, an attempt was made. :P

* * *

I can never work out, based on the stupid corny music, if the directing is actually SO much worse than the writing here (which…), and there actually was a serious point hiding in there of contrasting directly Cas being seduced by April and Dean torturing the reaper dude for info, as there actually  _is_ a contrast to be made there about coercing information, and if you ignored the setting and how April got Cas to talk, her dialogue  _is_  blatantly an interrogation about trying to find Metatron, who Cas mentioned earlier and her real goal is to find out about, as Cas isn’t a threat but Metatron seriously IS to this faction of angels:

> APRIL  
> Well, whoever you trusted… can’t they help undo this?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> We’re not in contact.

Although to be honest the surrounding dialogue is pretty much as bad as the directing for setting the tone or conveying anything sinister about this aside from the billions of candles thing most recently associated with Abaddon :P

* * *

(Ah geeze I have a headache now walking around this one.)

Here’s my progress on the colouring book I’ve made while not watching this :P

  


* * *

Honestly I want to know what Sam is thinking before Gadreel rolls his eyes to high heaven and deletes his memories of this 20 second exchange:

> SAM  
> What’s up?
> 
> DEAN  
> We’ve been chasing our tails all night. No Cas. “What’s up?” I’m fried. I think it’s time for plan B.
> 
> SAM  
> I’m not following.
> 
> DEAN  
> I’m letting you know.
> 
> SAM  
> O-okay. Um, letting me know what?
> 
> DEAN  
> I’m letting you know.
> 
> EZEKIEL finally takes over.

(I kept the last stage direction in because I’m cackling at it)

Sam wondering what the hell plan B is though, like, did he and Dean agree to it? WTF is it? Calling the cops and reporting a mass murderer of Cas’s description? Hiring a hot air balloon to scout from above?? Human sacrifice???

* * *

Anyway I think his desperation to prod “Zeke” to pop up and help speaks for itself, but I am quite amused because yes, Dean leading the charge on this makes sense with all his past characterisation and more profound bond with Cas blah blah on the one hand, of course. But on the other, you literally  _can’t_  make this episode without having Sam seriously less emotionally invested than Dean because if you ARE going to use “Zeke” as a deus ex machina to find Cas, it has to be invoked by the guy who knows he’s in there and Sam completely lacks the resources to have this side of the story. I’m always amused to analyse the moments where the show is written into a Destiel corner. I mean at this point I doubt anyone really would have thought  _not_  to write Dean as the lead on this side of the story, and his motivation to find Cas powering it all, but it’s a series of random walked-into-a-hole moments like this which have always ended up with Dean having Cas-related stories anyway, and the sheer cosmic accident of it all amuses me no end.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> My Grace. That’s why I’m human. He took my Grace for the spell.
> 
> APRIL  
> Or you gave it.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> It may be unwise to kill me. If my Grace were the key to empowering the spell, I may be key to countering it.

~~… are they arguing about consent and whether Cas was asking for it? No never mind *buries the can of worms in the back garden*~~

Actually picked that little exchange out because I’ve always been curious if Cas’s bluff was true. He has his actual real grace back now since late season 10 but heaven seems to agree with what the textual line on it is… from Crowley’s mouth, and it’s impressive the loops they went through to have  _only_  Crowley and Metatron ever know how to do it/if it could be fixed (well and God but catch that guy doing any heavy lifting :P) … I always figure it’s maybe not a choice Cas should be faced with as if he was going to give up his grace AGAIN to fix Heaven it wouldn’t be a totally free will choice to fall for the Nth time as the stronger choice by storytelling would be for him to keep his grace and stay an angel in defiance of his obligation, but on the other hand, depending on how much other crap is going on, is at least  _a_  way to do it? You know? :P Being a season 9 fandom baby, I still idly dream from time to time about stuff to do with the angel fall spell and Cas’s grace etc since these were the pressing questions buzzing around when I first found fandom.

* * *

Anyway, then Cas is briefly dead. The detail about Dean having to use the knife April stabbed him with and having to pull it out of Cas to kill her is always equal parts somehow as satisfying as it is gross and horrible. Like, talk about revenge for killing his boyfriend. This is an INTENSELY personal and powerful fight/aftermath of the fight. Like, Buckleming are Destiel af when they really put their minds to it and on Dean’s side of the story he’s had a one-track mind all episode until Gadreel derails it.

Ew I hate watching Dean be sad about losing Cas. Someone hug him.

Gadreel isn’t good at hugs. He is good at bringing everyone Dean loves back from the dead – it’s like he works through Sam, Cas and Charlie, and then the universe reaches Kevin and is like “welp this pattern is getting kind of dull let’s shake things up a bit”

* * *

Oh god I forgot the knee grasping was while Cas was alive. Add that to all the thigh stroking, face touching and what have you from other times Dean’s pawed all over Cas in delight to have him back to life.

Also: me @ the show – “Never do that again!” now I sit here thinking about all the billions of times they’ve ended up in that scenario. I’d like some knee squeezing, face touching and thigh stroking in slightly less terrible scenarios pls

* * *

Sam’s face while Dean tries to concoct the lie that makes the most sense to the room full of dead bodies and surprisingly  _not_  dead bodies he’s surrounded by. Honestly. It’s almost more of a discredit to Sam that he doesn’t start getting really suspicious just on principle of how weird Dean is being.

* * *

Heeere we go

> EZEKIEL  
> Castiel cannot stay here. He will bring the angels down on all of us.
> 
> DEAN  
> No, no, he’s got the Enochian tattoo. He’s warded.
> 
> EZEKIEL  
> He was warded when April found him, and she killed him.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yes, and you brought him back, and I thank you for that, but this is Cas, okay, who vouched for you when I didn’t know you from Jack. The bunker is safe.

… I will never be over Gadreel giving Cas really suspicious glares and Cas is just like “om nom nom burrito” in the background. Look at him, he’s harmless!

More to the point, this is where I have to plant the pin in the map for the “Gadreel represents here Sam’s lingering unconscious jealousy/weirdness about Cas as expressed in 8x23” thing (I mean, he exorcises him in 9x10 and he and Cas are buddies in 9x11 so it doesn’t last long and I think at least until further notice that could mark a symbolic end of that thread hopefully as I haven’t felt this is a thing afterwards)… Just because even the set up to this is Dean grinning cheerfully about having Cas around and enjoying his existence and just generally sounding really fond of Cas. Like, at that exact moment of him being thrilled to have Cas here sharing their space and eating their food and being ready to settle in and be their third wheel again… up pops Gadreel like “not happening” … telling it to Dean with Sam’s face like, 4 days or so after Sam said to Dean he was scared about Dean trusting another angel over him…

There’s an obvious point to make with Dean choosing to send Cas away because of how scared he is for Sam when Gadreel uses that against him, of this being one of the darker moments of the co-dependency and the damage it can cause… But I think from Sam’s side, this actually does have a pretty clever way he can subconsciously contribute to it too. I mean obviously they are both kind of helpless in it in some ways – as “I did what I had to do” grinds in to the dirt (most recently heard in the harsh critique of the co-dependency episode, 11x17) they kind of get dragged along into these situations and poor choices…

Anyway also I just feel like in a way after 8x23 Cas ~had~ to be sent away for this story arc, but they couldn’t exactly make Sam do it because that’s actual character assassination, but they need to work through this issue (again, feeling like it’s resolved by 9x11 so it’s a contained arc that doesn’t drag out forever unlike some of the stuff stirred up at the start of season 8 which they may have had plans to sort out sooner if the show hadn’t got renewed 18 times since then) and so a proxy character we’re about to have presented as a villain for the middle of the season ANYWAY takes this fall as part of the reasons not to trust him, but tying into this much wider theme.

Also, considering how Gadreel and Sam influence each other over this period (and again, I feel like Metatron is also sitting up in Heaven poking around the playing pieces when it comes to the Heaven-related stuff so who knows what else is going on here) if Sam feels some reservation or mistrust of Cas just in that kind of intrusive thoughts way or deep dark level where he’s actually seeming to smile and be happy about his presence on the surface level (except we’ve known a LONG time how much bubbles underneath Sam’s cool surface layer and this thing was just the most recent to burst out when the walls briefly came down) then Gadreel would be placed to pick it up and respond, knowingly or not, to Sam’s supposed whims.

* * *

(if you can’t tell I think this whole thing is a clusterfuck of terrible motivations and emotional biases and poor Cas over there with his burrito is caught between three conflicting forces, and I try not to play the blame game. Although season 11 does a lot to ease the soul specifically just on the “Buckleming finally don’t banish Cas from the Bunker just when he seems like he’s got home in the 3rd episode of the season” side of things, if nothing else)

* * *

“You can’t stay”

I totally count this as a whole separate thing under “season bad decisions” whiiich… like, 9x06 would be a much better place to talk about it :P

Again… at least this only lasts until 9x09 or 9x10. Even if the emotional damage is, like… ongoing

* * *

…

That’s such a grim note to end it on.

* * *

Hey, good news: we’re finally free of the stretch of episodes since like, mid-late season 8 that have all been utterly sapping to watch critically since they explode with themes and crap where almost every line is some new drama that spirals off down to later canon…. Maybe we can have a bit more of a regular schedule and shorter posts. :D


	4. 9x04

Or: once I had to learn “Somewhere over the Rainbow” for a thing and let me tell you nothing makes you hate The Wizard of Oz more as a kid than it being the method by which you learn you can’t sing, like,  _at all_

* * *

Hang on… I just realised, I don’t think we’ve  _actually_  seen more of the Bunker than Dean’s room, the dungeon & associated storeroom, the library and the war room.

I take it so much for granted that all the rest of it exists, probably because I have no distinct memories of first-watching seasons 7 to 9x05 and all the “character development” for the Bunker happens in this episode, when it comes to corridors, the kitchen being seen in person, Sam getting a room on camera, etc.

Yes we are at the shameful part of my journey: the fact that 9x04 once put me off watching this show so all it took was one well-placed weird dog episode following on from it to convince me I was done and I was out until circa 9x18 :P Listen, me and Robbie Thompson have a complicated history. And the fairy lore goes tits up in this episode, and you know me and fairies >.>

Since he’s peaced out to write his comic books and shitpost on Twitter, I won’t pick a fight with him. :P Actually, taking his season as a whole, his three episodes are 2 blatantly, heavily “bring fiction to reality” episodes with First Born wedged in between bringing Cain out of the show’s vague murmurings about him as a Biblical figure and distant shadowy ancestor, and slapping him bang in the middle of the story. Thematically, despite this being one of Robbie’s 3 episode seasons, it’s one of his tighter ones, and I think it’s fair to say season 9 is probably the season Robbie owns the mytharc of most, since 9x11 and 9x18 set up  _so much_ for the end of the season. 

So with better hindsight, and also knowing Robbie has barely  _started_  with some of his trademark stuff this far in the show, and here’s a real forerunner of the concept if not the characters yet, I think obviously even by the time I came back for the end of season 9 I knew I’d been way too harsh on this episode. Now, however, Dorothy serves as a template for “make fiction into the show’s reality” as Robbie’s ~thing~ that culminates with him yanking Chuck-as-God out of the show’s semi-official fanon and making it canon. And this season, it’s her from literary canon, Cain from the show’s canon as history, and Gabriel from that blurry space between canon and fanon: real character, fake story… 

I’m getting ahead of myself.

But like… if you thought me vs Robbie philosophy in the first 3 episodes of this season was bad, you probably should have been dreading me reaching one of his actual episodes. :P

* * *

this thought inspired by seeing the olde timey MoL go into the Bunker and doing their thing. Wow. @ me weren’t you planning on doing these rewatches faster now you were past the main plot nonsense for a little stretch of episodes?

> JAMES HAGGERTY [looking around in a non-impressed manner]  
> Took three years to build this dump?

@ me: see, this olde timey MoL is judging you

> PETER JENKINS [shocked]  
> Dump? Dump? Are you kidding? Do you realize where we are? This – this dump is the last true beacon of light in a world gone topsy-turvy. This dump is the epicenter of – of the ultimate chess match between good and evil.
> 
> [Scene switches to a close up of a chess board with the tagline SIX MONTHS LATER. The camera pulls back to reveal JENKINS and HAGGERTY playing chess in the bunker.]
> 
> PETER JENKINS  
> What a dump.
> 
> You know, when I got this assignment, I thought there’d be, I don’t know, excitement, adventure.

These lines, though… The Bunker might not be used properly in THEIR lifetime, but just you wait, God made pancakes in your kitchen. Is that enough excitement for you, Jenkins?

Actually, though, there’s some serious stuff here, irony about them not engaging with the fight and staying hidden away in their Bunker aside. We don’t have a great deal to shape the MoL for us since they’re an endangered species. I guess 10x19 has what will probably be the most relevant portrayal for season 12, as we can assume stereotypical English old white guys will be like the American MoL but worse on all relevant points. But these guys are staying down in the Bunker having no part of the fight while Dorothy is out in the world doing the  _real_  job, but not abiding by their codes:

> JAMES HAGGERTY   
> No.
> 
> That’s not the password.
> 
> [shakes his head]
> 
> There’s protocol here, young lady.

Toni seems to express a similar issue the Old White Guys in England have with the Winchesters, with the class conflict. The  _ideal_  about the Bunker is the two sides work in harmony, but Dorothy actually brings a destructive force into the Bunker, the dudes are useless and she has to scavenge their resources for herself to come up with even a temporary answer the problem. The modern hybrid hunting People of Letters approach makes a lot more sense - the intro for this episode was pretty much all Charlie and her “hunter in training” “you’re a woman of letters” arc so far, so she also represents a hybrid, modernised version of this approach - I was talking about that with her ipad with the monster lore app she made, how it condenses 90% of the reading the support team of MoL would have historically done into a few easy buttons to press. 11x16, also Robbie, shows Sam has been digitising the archives and can pull up rare lore on Soul Eaters from their private server, so they’re again taking their resources with them in a way and cutting out the need for bored men playing chess while other people fight the battles for them.

I’m also laughing about the “ultimate chess match between good and evil” thing because in a super simplified way before we understood Amara better, that was season 11, and 11x22 showed us the Bunker chessboard again, changed to be clearer it was about the black and white sides against each other. This theme applies to a lot, but in season 9 it actually doesn’t, in a played straight way, as this is the season where angels are the bad guys, and the good guy becomes a demon by the end. All that simple black and white chessboard understanding of the world is turned on its head and  _that_  is how the world is turned topsy turvy. Based on what we know of history in this show when it comes to monsters and hunting, the ~natural order~ exists until the show is well under way. These guys have  _no idea_  what a “topsy turvy” world looks like.

* * *

Also Haggerty is drinking away the boredom of being stuck in the Bunker, don’t think I didn’t catch you taking a drink from your flask, sir.

Hipflasks being very potent symbolism on this show after season 7

* * *

> YOUNG WOMAN  
> That’s right, rookie. It’s really me – Dorothy. Now, which one of you geniuses is gonna help me kill the wicked witch?

… should… I be adding this to my list of sneaky Wizard of Oz references so far? :P

I did appreciate this at the time, later lore mangling aside, because while I’m fond of “book character in the real world” in any form, especially when they end up writing their own story, the other characters from the pre-established world (in this case, we already know that MoL are a part of the SPN universe even if we’ve only just met these guys, they fit) being hyper aware of them as a fictional character is great, and the fictional character in question knowing it too is the best. :P

(that said, I know barely anything about the Wizard of Oz or its writer, so this is all just conceptually pleasing to me :P I know some people really geek out about it and my tags for this episode and 10x11 probably have a lot more in them about the actual books than I could ever have written about myself)

* * *

Okay this intro officially feels like literally 90% of all SPN episode intros, brief drop in on Crowley aside, and that’s the first time I’ve thought that so we have clearly hit a stride. :P Sam is researching in the Bunker, Dean comes in and explains why [x] character from the current ensemble is not in the episode to make up for [x] worse writers forgetting to mention them last episode, jaunty guitar music plays in the background. Shake up the variables and you have just about every episode ever.

Honestly, we call Robbie the Master of Foreshadowing but I am deeply disappointed that this never had any sneaky follow up:

> DEAN [walking down the stairs]  
> Well, he stared at the Angel tablet and repeated the word “falafel” for the entire ride. Kid’s cracked. I’m hoping this break will, uh, clear his head.

Unless someone knows where else falafels come into it that I’ve forgotten

* * *

Aurgh I noped out of the next exchange. Come on Lizzy. Get a grip. :P

> SAM  
> All right. Well, first, I think I might have found a way to help Cas.
> 
> DEAN [looks up suddenly concerned]  
> Did you talk to him?
> 
> SAM  
> No. And, by the way, I still don’t understand why he left in the first place. I mean, the bunker is the safest place for him. Bartholomew and – and who knows how many other angels are out there, gunning for them.
> 
> DEAN  
> Hey, look, nobody wants him here more than I do, okay? But, uh, he felt like he’d bring trouble down on us, so he had to split.

That “Dean looks up suddenly concerned” moment is what got me. This isn’t just “why is Cas not in this episode” like with booting Kevin out or giving us the info Crowley is still in the basement as with the other character intros/explanations in the opening minutes. There’s some serious story telling going on here. Dean in this moment is backed into a corner at once, terrified that Sam’s kind and helpful nature is going to immediately cause more damage than good when it comes to his recovery he doesn’t know he’s still on. As well as that, there’s the flicker of guilt about what he had to do to Cas, and fear that Cas would have told Sam more, as he too also doesn’t know that he shouldn’t be talking – I was saying last episode how the show accidentally ends up playing into the Destiel stuff just by the structure they have to work with, but here this is playing more deliberately into the fact Sam and Cas are pretty isolated from each other, and  _don’t_  have the same relationship Cas and Dean do, so showing us Dean had been relying on that lack of communication to keep the secret.

And then we get Sam’s perspective on it, which is that Dean has told him another lie, that Cas willingly left on his own…

(and Dean shows up to the now mostly empty Bunker proposing they watch Game of Thrones and get take out and enjoy their hard-earned social isolation… I think in this case bringing Charlie in to watch with them is important to stop them sinking into the sort of funk like we saw at the end of 8x10 where they’d wilfully isolated themselves with each other and seemed pretty grim about it. But Sam is being kept oblivious so for now it’s more like, let him be helpful,  _don’t_  let him notice how toxic the air is around them. This is a fluff episode but it’s also about escaping into Literature, a theme that follows Charlie for all her early appearances before she completes that arc by literally escaping off into Oz, a place from the books. There’s a lot of layers to it, but anyway in the here and now before she gets involved, Dean is offering it as escapism and I think a distraction, before he ever even finds out Sam is trying to help Cas from afar.) 

If they’ve barely even had this conversation and Sam doesn’t have a satisfactory answer to why Cas left (and Dean ducked out with Kevin immediately after booting Cas out so he didn’t have to answer these questions) then he has probably been chewing over how to  _avoid_  answering them for a while longer.

Anyway re: “no one wants him here more than me” – in this climate I feel like is probably the truth to sell the lie, spoken from a place of deep guilt >.>

> DEAN  
> But if you got a way to help him, I’m all ears.

That was a delightfully bitchy comment addressed to Gadreel, who he knows would be listening extra specially closely to anything to do with Cas right now – and has probably been panicking about Sam’s mission to help Cas just for what his current vessel might blunder into doing :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> This was…your idea? 
> 
> SAM [looks around slightly amused]  
> Do you see anybody else in here?

*Gadreel smacks his forehead*

HONESTLY you’re 4 episodes in and you’re going to pieces, Dean.

HONESTLY Sam he’s going to pieces how can you not see something is wrong? :P

* * *

However they are discussing ways to protect Cas/monitor angels from afar, which is exactly my headcanon of what Metatron is doing, and since this idea I don’t think even survives the episode let alone ever gets mentioned again, like,  _ever_ , and this  _is_  Robbie at work, I’m gonna take it as thematically backing up my idea that Metatron is doing exactly this.

* * *

> SAM  
> Oh, no idea. See, at first, I thought the table was the computer, but it’s not. It turns out it’s just part of it. But I did find these cables underneath, and I followed them. You’re never gonna believe what I found.

When I make these jokes about Toni shooting him for destroying the Bunker, I’m serious about it. Boy’s been ripping up the wiring since 8x13 and he’s not slowing down.

* * *

I am this tempted to make a “Sam being deeply disrespectful of the Bunker” gifset and end it with Toni :P

* * *

> SAM  
> Voilà.
> 
> DEAN  
> This is a computer?

Bobby, up in Heaven: “IT ACTUALLY HAS BUTTONS YOU IDJIT”

* * *

In Sam’s defence, re: the inevitable trial the MoL hold for him, DEAN is the one who pries the back off the computer and suggests they let Charlie go to town on it

* * *

There’s something deeply disturbing about the way he violently pulls off the cover of the computer and gets flung back into the shelf, creating a chain of consequences that knocks over the jar, unleashes the witch and leads to Charlie’s temporary death…

… almost like this is a season where consequences of hasty reckless actions are a thing

* * *

Have I mentioned how much I love Robbie Thompson today she says while going on and on about how much she loves Robbie Thompson

> HAGGERTY  
> Wait. You captured her all by yourself? 
> 
> DOROTHY  
> Yes. Despite all my lady parts, I managed to capture the wicked witch. 
> 
> JENKINS  
> Your father would be very proud. I mean, did you know that he – 
> 
> DOROTHY [interrupting]  
> Wasted my time with his words. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do the same.

These men can *not* see past the whole, like, patriarchy thing and Dorothy is just

I am in love.

* * *

> DOROTHY [interrupting]  
> Now, I have tried cutting off her head, burning her, dousing her with holy water. All she did was laugh.

Oh!!! She’s an Abaddon parallel!!

(Says someone who came just a couple of months too late to fandom for this to be at all relevant for anyone to be discussing. Shh this is exciting for me!)

She also requires a special weapon to be killed, the shoes are superficially (very superficially) shaped like the Mark (okay they have the colour at least)… there must be  _some_  sort “the river ends at the source” connection to that and the poppy bullets from Oz, etc etc… And of course she’s a destructive angry female force that can’t be reasoned with, stampedes through their bunker/lives, gets Charlie killed, messes up the Bunker kitchen (aka Dean’s soul) and then there’s this, which I was about to gif just for the pretty episode gifset I have been adding to way too much in the opening of the episode:

Which comes after Dorothy tells the MoL to get to researching to find a way to kill the unkillable, and of course Dean spends a good chunk of the rear end of the season moping around the Bunker doing adjacent research to killing the unkillable or at least fixating on the situation…

> DOROTHY  
> All right. Just open your damn books already.

^ could be a Dean line in another scene

… they kind of look like lovers adrift in time in that last moment of the transition pfft

* * *

Anyway. Charlie!!!!

*warring forces of heart eyes and bitter despair*

> CHARLIE  
> Okay. It was just a couple little cases. I took down a teenage vampire and a ghost…
> 
> …which sounds like a Y.A. novel if you say it out loud. 
> 
> SAM [still concerned]  
> Charlie, how’d it go? 
> 
> CHARLIE  
> It was, uh… It was intense. But I kind of wish hunting was more…magical, you know?
> 
> [DEAN rolls his eyes and SAM looks confused]
> 
> CHARLIE  
> Never mind.

They’re obviously freaked out that she’s hunting (and it’s like 10x worse that Dean does the thing Dean always does and gets the most important reaction shots in the dialogue with 3 characters present because of course) and now we have her spirit for adventure really kicking off – that urge that she repressed into LARPing when we first re-met her (and seemed to have just been channelled harmlessly into hacking and hook ups and comic con shenanigans when we first ever met her) … she’s kind of moved more fully into being on a serious adventure quest thingy. 

For her the yearning for adventure is tied up in the stories she’s read, so Dorothy being the first available public domain character she meets, is destined to pull her into the stories. Right from the start, Charlie compares her experiences with being in a “YA novel” to start with, but, obvious misrepresentations of the genres aside, she’s craving the big epic narratives. What was originally just a quest to find herself and her place in the world, though, has a really dark ending where she is killed trying to help and getting too close to the real Big Narrative of this world that centres around Sam and Dean, and so all her yearning from adventure now has me right with Dean, looking really worried about how enthusiastic she is to join in, and worried about how dangerous her craving for more is, especially when she continually relates it to trying to chase the feeling she’s had from fiction – I hate to see that this arc ends up being a “should have stayed at home with your books” story for Charlie, because this sort of narrative is supposed to go the other way and help a character blossom and not  _need_  the books any more as they find themselves… Killing her off is just the most crushing end to an arc set up to normally be answered with a character emerging like a butterfly >.>

(Yeah, killing her off was a crime on a ridiculous number of levels and since we’ve exhausted the obvious now I’m just pinging rubber bands at the back of Singer’s head from across the room for my own satisfaction, despite quite enjoying how prettily directed this episode is)

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> It’s kind of an alarm system. Global badness? It freaks. This computer is what locked this place down.
> 
> SAM  
> Can we use it to track angels?
> 
> CHARLIE  
> All right. Let me see what I can do.

In other news: Charlie clearly broke the damn thing or else 10x23 would have shut it down AGAIN

* * *

I like how they use her to sell Surface tablets, though. My brother got one with the exact same red keyboard, which is always fun to be murdered by Charlie sadness when he’s just, like, hanging out.

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> I know. Not a good idea, according to the “Supernatural” books.
> 
> [Both boys look annoyed] 
> 
> SAM  
> You really can’t delete those from the Internet? 
> 
> CHARLIE  
> Not even I can do that. Come on! 
> 
> DEAN  
> Where do you even find them? 
> 
> CHARLIE [with a cheeky grin]  
> A top-secret place I call Amazon. And someone uploaded all the unpublished works. I thought it was fanfic at first, but it was clearly Edlund’s work.

I find it quite sweet that Robbie wrote just “Edlund” rather than “Carver Edlund” since real Edlund has left and we’d be coming right up to where his episode should be now if he hadn’t. The feeling about the story living on is one thing, and of course the Winchesters struggle with exactly the same thing Dorothy does, with their lives being turned into a ~fictional~ account that’s actually all to real… The problem for THEM is in reverse to the rest of the season, that their history/legacy/story whatever has become one hell of a ball and chain, and haunts them. I mean, like, this is a hilarious moment that still makes me laugh out loud, but Season Bad Decisions is powered by a lot of baggage and trauma they carry out of the past.

There’s also a sense of a baton passing:

> SAM  
> Who uploaded it? 
> 
> CHARLIE  
> I don’t know. Their screen name was beckywinchester176. Ring a bell?

Becky is curating the gospels for them and ensuring the Word is preserved and spread (she… must realise… she hooked up with God, after reading Swan Song, right?? This episode may be the first time we know for SURE that she knew about the later works), and Charlie’s like, idk, the acolyte of the stories now. Aside from the awkward family conversations about the books that she has with Sam and Dean she keeps it a bit more to herself that she’s a fan compared to Becky, and just lives the lifestyle preached from the books, rather than seeking out Sam and Dean specifically, beyond normal social contact. It’s much healthier fandom-ing although usual complaints about the end of season 10 stand… >.>

Anyway her enthusiasm is never presented as a bad thing by Robbie even if he’s writing Sam and Dean concerned about her, they don’t try and ban her from hunting and they know she can hold her own.

> SAM  
> None.  Uh, nobody’s. Uh, no, there are no bells. Uh…No.

… you know my favourite season 9 hobby of checking in with Gadreel. If he WASN’T snooping, Sam’s blind panic probably brought his attention just to make sure they weren’t being  _attacked_.

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> So, takeout, sleepover, braid each other’s hair?

The fact there is no Dean reaction shot to this is CRIMINAL.

Point stands, though, of Charlie as a Dean mirror saying thereabouts the same line as 8x08 (hey another episode where stuff from the fictional world of cartoons came to reality around them) and both sort of ingratiating herself into the family on a level with Cas but also emphasising his absence (accidentally) just since that line was once addressed to him. One episode after Cas is booted out, that’s got to weigh heavily and even if we don’t see Dean’s reaction to it (dangit, Singer, get with the Destiel already >.>), I think this makes the point at least in the dialogue for the sake of analysing it since it is such an obviously ripped off line we have to ask why.

(I wonder if the assumption was that because Dean gets 1 billion reaction shots there’d probably be at least a glimpse of his face somewhere between these lines just by the habit of how the show gets edited)

* * *

People say Sam’s room has no character, but his horrible backpack he’s owned since season 1 (and frankly LOOKS like it) has a place at the table and I think that’s precious.

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> Oh, you have no idea. Wait until he –
> 
> SAM  
> Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! S-spoilers. I haven’t read all the books yet. 
> 
> DEAN  
> You’re gonna read the books? 
> 
> SAM  
> Yes, Dean. I like to read books – you know, the ones without pictures.

Actually you know what – I was going to just ignore this since Robbie eventually fixed it by forcing a scenario where they couldn’t swap the lines and have it still make sense, but it just bothers me that Dean is sounding surprised that Sam is going to do something nerdy like read some books, even though he KNOWS Sam does stuff like that. I don’t mean to pull Buckleming on them since it’s not like they’re shining beacons of good characterisation and I suspect a fair few other times J2 change lines around a bit are Bucklemming episodes and they are doing us a favour, but literally from 9x03, less than 15 minutes of non-stop watching time ago:

> DEAN  
> What are you talking about? I don’t see half of the nerdy stuff that you do. It doesn’t mean that you don’t do nerdy stuff.

Telling us that SAM does nerdy stuff is completely pointless as it’s such a well-established character trait since the start that people would naturally expect him to be bookish… (but at least using an anvil-heavy Buckleming line makes my point :P)

It’s much more interesting having a moment where Dean expresses interest in actually reading the books after watching the show and getting invested (and probably wanting to find out more – let’s be real, Charlie probably made at least one of those obnoxious comments people like me who read the books before watching the majority of the show make like “oh the books go into so much more detail about this” “oh you find out all about this side character if you just read the books” “blah blah I know more about this fictional universe than you blaaaah”)… 

Like, he’s made literary references enough times we know he reads books… Having a moment where he strongly admits to doing so says a lot more than him just teasing Sam for being a nerd, which he’s been doing the entire show. Charlie especially has already been used heavily to get Dean to open up and embrace stuff he likes and be more comfortable being nerdy, so this scene could have been used to just give us a liiittle bit more good positive characterisation in that direction season 8 was opening Dean up in… Although I do think he was also starting to shut down again already even towards the end of season 8 so maybe it was a call on Dean’s comfort level of being that open? I don’t feel like in the setting of this exact scene it makes much sense for Dean to be THAT defensive though.

*grumbles pointlessly into the night*

* * *

> SAM  
> I am moved in. This is just my style.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, this is his, uh, style.

Note: may have filled the room with box files, not replaced the regulation mattress, etc, but HAS installed a modern TV

Sam x electronics in the Bunker… it’s a Thing.

* * *

I suppose the key lines are

> SAM  
> This isn’t our home. This is where we work 
> 
> DEAN  
> What’s the difference?

I know everyone talks about it a lot especially as it came up all across season 11 which finally convinced Sam to call it home hours before Lucifer stole his room and probably like 2 days before Toni was like “hi, get out of this Bunker you ungrateful swine”… (hey as with romances once you get a pairing together you have to add strife :P)

and tbh Dean should have seen this coming from 8x13/14 during their settling in phase, when he moved to meet Sam in the middle on their little conflict over this after being so focussed on nesting he wasn’t even appreciating the work value of the place, but Sam never moved to agree with Dean… But yeah, this is where this subplot for Sam begins in earnest I guess?

I assume it’s all the same stuff from the Christmas episode (Carver, way back in season 3) and Dark Side of the Moon (Dabbflin) where Sam has a fixed idea of normality and what constitutes a home, and I mean, 8x14 had Sam saying he saw a way out with the Trials so while they were busy discovering the Bunker, Sam was STILL yearning for a life after, and seeing a world where he might be able to go to college or “live normal” (after I re-watched 2x02 earlier this month I went on and on about that for Dean re: apple pie life, but for Sam he rejects “live normal” pretty thoroughly UNTIL Amelia (who is visually linked to Lisa, because the show has a very specific language for this apparently involving picnics) so season 8 for the first time he starts to examine his life for a position of relative security, past the aftermath of the apocalypse for him, and starts to as what he wants and if he could really have that “normal” again)… actually settling into the Bunker upsets that assumption he could have “normal”, as it would force him to accept that this is his “normal” now if he puts down roots for a long-term stay and separates the idea of living and working quarters.

(and he goes through a lot but to stick with 11x04, since it’s come up a few times already in these notes, that’s got Sam musing finally on the idea of settling down with a hunter, someone who understands the life, and might actually want to live in this Bunker with them :P He begins to see a way that it could be “home” without sacrificing the emotional heart of what he wants even if it doesn’t look “normal” … which was the exact same message the Christmas episode had, so I can confirm if Scrooge had that story in season 3 of his life, he’d be right back at it with a 4 season arc about whether he does or doesn’t like Christmas in seasons 8-11 of his life)

* * *

> SAM  
> So, Charlie, what was all that about how hunting isn’t magical?
> 
> CHARLIE  
> Saving people, hunting things, the family business? I am down. But… I was raised on Tolkien, man. I mean, where is all this? Where are my White Walkers and my volcano and magic ring to throw in the damn thing? Where – where’s my quest?
> 
> SAM  
> Magic, quests…suck. Trust me. They’re all – 
> 
> [Scene turns immediately to Black & White and the 1930’s MOL group sitting in the bunker]
> 
> HAGGERTY  
> –dead ends

I guess that makes Haggerty Sam, Jenkins and all his wide-eyed idealism about the job that’s been partially but not completely tarnished by actually doing it, Charlie and of course Dorothy has already been established as Dean

(the lurking, unspeaking presence in the room as the witch also works for Gadreel, only she kills while he resurrects)

Anyway that’s Charlie’s other “Nooo don’t do iiiit” speech about idealism that’s got worse with time. Like, I mean, we were talking about Pandora’s box a lot when Amara had just got let out and tbh Charlie sort of represented “hope” in the first place… (the “box” being where fridged women are put symbolically I guess, since we got Mary back via Amara, a different representation of hope returned to them…) but Charlie as the light, positive mirror to their experiences with the happy resolution tended to breeze through around major plot stuff and show them how it could be done… At the moment she’s representing to Sam the idealism he’s  _never_ had about their job (listen to him complaining about it in 1x01 when Dean comes to drag him off in the opening scenes, tbh, never mind anything else, like how the “saving people hunting things” mantra is so often a conflict for him when the mytharc or Dean force him to keep going :P) as well as helping to stir up the conflict about how he thinks of the Bunker as home. He seems pretty dark and cynical about the whole thing, tbh, and I guess the point of forcing him to get introspective around here, is that this is the first episode of “rest” after the mytharc stuff, and that mytharc stuff included Sam ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good/his own perceived redemption… He needs to find an anchor and security in what he’s doing, at least to give him the conviction to carry on until he next gets seriously shaken up (so basically… the next 5 episodes :P) although of course there are longer term reasons for making Sam introspective on this.

This episode is also completely neutral on introducing them to a reason to do the hunt what with springing it on them as the result of a workplace accident, and as far as I can recall, next episode doesn’t count however they got out there (as far as I recall they pop up in the town investigating shit after the cold open with no explanation?), 9x06 Sam just stays in the Bunker doing the boring research legwork (as was *intended* in this episode before Oz happened all over their day :P), 9x07 Sonny drags them into it, 9x08 Jody drags them into it, and 9x09 they hit a mytharc lead they can’t ignore and the second half of the episode is all set in and around the Bunker on their side anyway while implying downtime, so all in all even Dean does minimal work to distract them with hunts, and meanwhile there’s 3 episodes Dean or both of them are summoned to a case by someone else reaching out to them, and they seem unmotivated to do the job except for by request, and inclined to staying in the Bunker, messing around with what parts of the mytharc are in their control. I don’t think it’s at all a coincidence we have a bottle episode here, and 9x06 on Sam’s side would be a second bottle episode if we didn’t see what else was going on with Dean n Cas…

Basically, yeah, I think Sam is mired in this negative outlook and basically housebound whether by Dean not wanting to risk him doing too much crap while possessed and still recovering, or his own lack of interest in the job, but I think this is a quiet depressive low for him that I never see anyone really talk about? I mean he said he was happy at the end of 9x02, but I don’t trust that at all to be reflecting Sam’s emotions, and I think this episode gives us a lot more truth in it, even while Sam seems quite cheerful and distracting himself with projects like hunting down the wiring for the map table or whatever.

* * *

> HAGGERTY  
> Wait! Jenkins, Jenkins! I know you’re in there. 
> 
> WICKED WITCH/JENKINS  
> Jenkins is gone.

Ahahahaha Robbie stop

* * *

(I’d say “don’t stop” but I know he doesn’t. :3 *salutes at 11x16*)

* * *

> JENKINS [dying]  
> You were right. There’s nothing worse than adventure.

Hang on a sec I need to go hurl things at Robert Singer for directing this sweet innocent Charlie mirror’s death by stabbing >.> THIS WAS NOT A SUGGESTION FOR WHAT TO DO WITH HER, YOU DICK

* * *

Actually TBH Dorothy and the Witch “timetravel” to the present very much in the same way as Abaddon as well.

I’ve seen peeps compare her to Amara as well for the way in which they were contained in the jar (as a parallel to the Empty, an as a threat for what might happen to Dean at the end of 11) so I guess that’s more of the swings and roundabouts of the themes. I think Robbie’s just really good at nailing imagery that fits with the general concepts of the show, so his episodes are endlessly useful to re-apply.

* * *

I’m just really fond of the weird aesthetic of the collection of things on the MoL shelves.

I wonder who else is stored on them

* * *

Wait a minute, this was apparently their lab and then they put a computer in the middle of it… Is there  _not_  still a lab in the Bunker? That seems really weird. I guess magic computer trumps alchemy and they still keep all the spell ingredients they’ll ever need in the storeroom, but even so.

* * *

> DOROTHY  
> It’s you and me forever, bitch. 
> 
> […]
> 
> DOROTHY  
> A binding spell that came at a price – her soul with mine.

I mean… :P

This is even thematically relevant to Dean and Amara in THIS season since Dean makes an impulse decision to take the Mark and therefore binds himself to her without having any idea what he’s doing – based on foreshadowing as late as 11x16, which comes right on the fuzzy edges of where people confidently speculate Dabb era kicked in, it could have been super thematically tight right to the end to combine all the symbolism in key Robbie Carver era MotW episodes to explain Dean eventually chucking himself into the Empty with her to stop the end of the universe… Instead of being major plot stuff in the sense of predicting the resolution, it ended up the emotional arc between him and Amara and this joining together was something she offered him in 11x21, that he turned down, and it was symbolic of his journey instead. Which I rather like a lot, but on the other hand even trying not to speculate plot, that was plot that was really really hard NOT to speculate :P Probably the only thing I actually got myself worked up for in season 11, after learning my lessons about expecting anything in season 10…

Anywho as a result of 11x21 I guess it makes it much easier once we hit the Mark of Cain stuff for everything to be related directly to Dean’s emotional arc rather than explaining how his hiatus life in a jar with Amara is symbolic of that stuff :P I’m glad he’s not spending hiatus in a jar. That would be pretty boring to speculate about.

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> You’re protected by the Witch of the North’s kiss. It’s from the books. 
> 
> DOROTHY  
> Oh, forget the books! They’re not important. I’m protected. You aren’t. 

I don’t know anything about the books or even remember the film well enough to know who the Witch of the North is but I’m going to assume it’s gay and that’s why Charlie remembers Dorothy getting kissed :P

* * *

I guess if nothing else this episode kind of resets the damage of 8x22 for using the Winchester Gospels against them because it shows that fiction is a double edged sword, but in this case they need to find out that it can be used in their favour too (“helpful and dreamy” was an ATTEMPT to use the books in their favour but it’s not Charlie’s fault she said it right when Dean was in one of his biggest sulks about Cas since season 6 :P)… I mean 9x18 then goes to show that they’re still kind of dangerous, except that it’s more complicated because Metatron goes off-book and just uses them for inspiration, going for the subtext and characterisation rather than the obvious plot points that Crowley and Charlie use to their advantage in 8x22 and this episode…

* * *

There’s something really sweet about the way Dorothy waits for Charlie to speak, and maybe give her orders or whatever. Just… :’)

* * *

And then Charlie gets all bossy with her

* * *

(and Dorothy kind of likes it)

* * *

help

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> Ozma of Oz – 
> 
> DOROTHY  
> Is a total ass.

Charlie hooked up with Ozma according to 10x11 deleted scenes, right…? I wonder if she did it to make Dorothy jealous :P

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> Good. Haggerty made a deal with a fairy and got some poppy extract.

… Haggerty what did you dooooo

Idea: the MoL have had so much shitty luck because one of their members kept dealing with freakin’ fairies.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Wow. If it isn’t the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. Your new houseguest – so misunderstood.
> 
> [the boys look confused]
> 
> Neither of you saw “Wicked”?

Pfft that first line has spawned so much meta

Amused by Charlie saying she thought the Continued Adventures of the Winchester Gospels were fan fiction, and then Crowley references the fan fic of the Oz books treating it as if canon, aka wildly misunderstanding the source material when the sympathetic spin off to the villain (I assume?) is just conjecture on the story from another writer… But on the other hand, wouldn’t he like the sympathetic villain who’s just been misunderstood right now, when he’s just starting his journey of uncomfortably friendly Crowley instead of villain Crowley? I guess it says something about the validity of interpretation – even WRONG interpretation – depending on who’s doing the interpreting. Crowley being a fan of the Wicked Witch is sandwiched between Charlie fanning over Dorothy. I think Crowley can see that this Witch is not like the one from Wicked, obviously, but he’s showing this is his angle he’s taking on her – a fanon sort of admiration?

I dunno :P

What gives a story meaning?

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Give me a moment. I still need to air myself out.
> 
> [DEAN pulls his gun and shoots CROWLEY square in the chest.] 
> 
> DEAN  
> I think you’re aired out enough.

I love and hate when they interact :P

It’s interesting just how scared Dean is of him still at this point – he and Sam have guns trained on him and Dean holds the knife to his neck just to unlock the padlock on the chains they have Crowley in then backs off like he might explode. I don’t think they interact again until 9x10, when Cas is there the entire time so Dean is pretty much chill with Crowley because no matter how freaked out he is by his presence, he trusts Cas completely to keep him safe. And then 9x11 they already have a different sort of understanding just from Crowley legitimately helping them, and Dean is in enough of a funk he probably wouldn’t even care about Crowley attacking him in the first place. And from then on out he has to at least subconsciously twig he’s being seduced, especially as I think there’s a long stretch where he’s just calling Crowley and not getting an answer and Sam makes fun of him for it

* * *

> DEAN  
> Damn it, I just cleaned in here.
> 
> SAM  
> Really? 
> 
> DEAN  
> Looks like we got a witch here.

Rowena is given a life ban just in case (in 11x23 she doesn’t come into the kitchen, just hovers in the doorway, right?)

It’s Sam’s “really?” that gets me here… Like he can’t believe Dean would be that fussy about the kitchen or care that much. Which goes nicely with their discussion about home and it’s important that this theme is here in the episode we start to see more of the Bunker and especially the kitchen and the tie to the more domestic side of living here – the table makes its first appearance and although nothing happens yet, I’ve ended up strongly associating it to Sam, thematically, for the codependency arc, never mind the Destiel stuff that 10x18 and 11x18 sealed about the other side of the table.

(I’m just saying it would also go really nicely with another incident of Sam nt believing Dean to have hidden depths aside from kitchen cleaning, like, say, reading books. You know, the ones without pictures. :P)

* * *

You know, given the whole key of Oz thing was planted by Robbie, master of foreshadowing yadda yadda, back in 8x17, I’m going to venture an opinion now: it’s actually  _funnier_  that the Spear of Destiny hasn’t been used just for giving Lucifer a headache. I think I wrote notes to 8x17 after 11x21 (Oh my god I am so slow… that was 10 episodes ago :/) and so I was still bitterly amused about Lucifer not using it, but given how the story shook out, the idea that Lucifer spent a portion of season 11 oblivious to the Spear of Destiny just hanging out in the Bunker under Dean’s bed or whatever he did with it, and had to settle for some crappy second rate magic spear that he stabbed Amara with… Somehow that just amuses me. If only for the links between episodes (e.g. in 11x14 Lucifer says he’s had his crypts emptied. In 8x17 it’s got one of said crypts but who knows maybe the most useful weapon wasn’t even IN one of them but it WAS in an episode with one :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Charlie? Safest place in this joint is the dungeon.
> 
> CHARLIE  
> You have a dungeon in this place? Of course you do. 
> 
> DEAN  
> So maybe you should… 
> 
> CHARLIE  
> I am not hiding, especially in a dungeon. Wicked Witch, a key, a quest? Let’s do this.

*gnashes teeth* it’s like… NOW she’s a tragic character who was set up to fly too close to the sun, and gets killed for her cute little idea of being a hunter? I’m just… Grararrrarargh

(also the head popped off my Charlie Funko Pop recently and I’m still sulking about that)

Although TBH we know Crowley’s down there and he got to Kevin… is it even safe for Charlie to chill down there? Again, the Bunker not as safe as it seems, the threat of something dark lurking even in your own home… That slight sense of wrongness that follows around the time Sam is possessed…

* * *

> DOROTHY  
> I can’t believe I’ve lived here for 75 years. How long have you called this place home? 
> 
> SAM  
> My brother calls it home. Me, I, uh – I haven’t had that much luck with homes. 
> 
> DOROTHY  
> Me neither. Overrated, you ask me. Yellow bricks or not, give me the open road any day.

Sam in 11x04 again, patting the car like “we are home”… TBH I wouldn’t totally begrudge Sam carrying on hunting on the open road, if he could truly overcome his ideal of a home and settling down and getting a dog or whatever. But I think balance makes more sense for him given how ingrained his yearning to be settled is. He has such a complicated relationship with home – he doesn’t remember a fixed home, in the episode “Home” he didn’t have the connection to the place Dean did that messed him up so badly, but he had the stronger emotional connection to Mary’s ghost in the house and was generally more emotionally in tune with the plot that episode while Dean was angsting about the past. In 5x16 Sam’s heavens show he yearns for normality and making a settled home for himself, but then 5x22 is focussed a LOT on Sam’s side for discovering the real home had been the car you lived in along the way, so 11x04 is very in-character in that respect (and had all its little Swan Song callbacks in the opening and 11x08 reminding us of the lego and army men again as connected specifically TO Sam) so I think actually more than Dean is, even, he’s been attached to the idea of the Impala as home and is emotionally connected to it in a different way. 

(for some reason my brain is badgering me to write down about Sam NOT getting it about playing Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz in 3x11, since that seems anvillicious to the story of this episode but I can’t work out HOW :P)

Anyway I feel like this is setting Sam up with the way of begging a question of if he REALLY wants it like this or REALLY just thinks of the Bunker this way, the open road another.

I should probably shh on this subject since it seems I could talk about Sam the social aspirant nomad who has no idea where he wants to be or what he wants to be doing forever >.>

* * *

It’s kind of relatable :P

* * *

… Dean as a pack rat is always amusing/heart warming.

Mostly because he likes owning stuff. He likes HAVING a home and filling it with stuff.

* * *

Poor Charlie >.>

> EZEKIEL  
> I cannot keep doing that. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Why the hell not?! 
> 
> EZEKIEL  
> I am barely back to half-strength, Dean. Every time I use my power, it weakens me, which means I will have to stay in your brother longer than you want – longer than we both want.

I like how it wasn’t even an argument last time though. Obviously, way more political between Gadreel and other angels and Cas in particular – again, the fact he won his first round of trust just on citing Cas’s name, in the holy fire scene. The fact he sees Charlie’s life as one that can be negotiated at all (and forcing Dean to make yet more ethical sacrifices) vs just implicitly knowing he *had* to resurrect Cas though.

* * *

> EZEKIEL  
> The witch running around your bunker is very powerful. I can help with the witch or save your friend.

He really doesn’t get humanity yet, does he :P

And by humanity I mean Dean Winchester

* * *

… Humanity is so bad at lying how the hell does he make it to episode 9

* * *

> DOROTHY  
> In Oz. My father was obsessed with his work as a Man of Letters, and then I was born… and nothing changed. He would keep his work a secret, but I was such a curious kid. I was always looking for trouble, looking for the next big adventure.

Terrible fathers at 10 o’clock

Given this one is a writer and had his work he was obsessed with before the kids were even born, this kinda makes him a God parallel >.>

* * *

Dorothy paints a picture of being killed for adventure as just part of the day to day events in the life of a hunter – and the obvious point is, for Sam and Dean they die like every 3 days, statistically, and it never stops them. Robbie tends to glorify this side of things so much but in this case he’s lumping in Charlie with the Winchesters via Dorothy’s reassuring words about it being part of the job and all this stuff about Charlie’s possible death suggests it’s a good thing. Aka it MAY get you killed but only in the line of doing what you love, and for us special people we’re sort of above regular old death because it’s all part of the adventure and the excitement.

In a way, it sort of puts them into that liminal space existing between their “natural” life and their time as a hunter – I guess a close call can work just as well, but actual death seems to be marrying yourself to the job? the hideously obvious example is Dean in season 2 after John’s deal – Dean’s private personal crap in season 2 ends with 2x20 and that dream of a normal life he has to kill followed immediately by him selling his soul and throwing away all but the next year of his life…

* * *

> DOROTHY  
> I met up with these three freedom fighters, and they thought I was this child of destiny chosen to kill the Wicked Witch.

That sounds familiar :P And again, we’re coming to the very end of the space where Destiny has no sway on them – this Dean mirror is saying all this before in a few short episodes, another Robbie episodes takes Dean face to face with a character who’s been a part of his Destiny a long long time.

* * *

> DOROTHY  
> Sometimes real life is darker than fiction.

It’s probably important that the Winchester Gospels are sanitised for the viewing public but tbh I should probably sit on this one until 9x18 or even if I ever make it to 11x20 again and just link these up with that thought:

> DOROTHY  
> Revisionist history. That’s my father’s way of trying to undo what had happened to me. But I knew the truth. 

* * *

*focuses on Charlie making heart eyes at the motorbike*

* * *

*various drama including more “I know you’re in there” that doesn’t work and Dorothy calling Sam and Dean ‘pencil necks’ which will never not be funny*

* * *

Charlie saves the day and also proves the point that the door at the top of the Bunker is only a secondary door after a little spiral staircase to get down there (they are DEEP underground) and so… yeah… I guess we have to retract one of the complaints about 10x22’s weird-ass continuity.

(I’ll take the driving thing to my grave :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Baby looks good in here, huh?
> 
> SAM  
> Not bad.

I don’t think Dean realises he’s put Sam’s home inside his home? :P Like, peeps were talking about that in relation to 11x21 where the Impala gets dumped in the storeroom by God, but it also happens at the end of this episode and I guess makes the compromise which Sam probably works on. The car has a place here, so it’s kind of at least more formalising this place as a viable not-quite-home for him? I assume there’s more to this set than just the car and motorbike porn especially as I think the ONLY other time we even have a suggestion the garage exists is 11x04 which after the long bleak wilds of the plot accordion, tries to wrangle this subplot back into place for Sam.

* * *

> SAM  
> Dorothy, I, uh – I found something in the archives. Pretty sure it belongs to you.
> 
> [SAM hands DOROTHY a copy of “The Wonderful World of Oz”]

Isn’t he reading a copy of it again at some point in this season? 9x07 I think? The Bunker is pretty well-stocked on Oz books. I blame Haggerty, although tbh if Baum was a MoL then they probably just stocked his books like schools have textbooks, just on principle.

> DOROTHY smiles  
> You have no idea how odd it is having a series of books written about you. 
> 
> SAM  
> Actually, I-I do know, uh, and it is definitely weird. But you know what? End of the day, it’s our story, so we get to write it.

Thanks, Robbie. For once in my life I don’t have to summarise an episode that had the theme of storytelling with this message. :P Of course since the obvious is now getting stated in the text, the more meta stuff is becoming more important in the subtext, like the way the stories get used when they’re out of the control of the writer, or the reputation of the characters being more powerful an influence than how they actually are. (Gadreel being the next character up who has a thing about his too well-known story affecting him, to the point of emotionally blackmailing him into killing Kevin… I wonder if he’s woken up in there yet to hear the moral of the story because some positive thinking about re-writing how people think of him is kind of his motivation. :P I guess either way he can get it from Sam’s memory because after all this drama I’m sure he’d check out the reruns later when Sam’s asleep if he did miss it)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Uh, I didn’t.
> 
> CHARLIE  
> Don’t B.S. a B.S.er.

I love anything where Charlie or Dean directly relate themselves to the other :3

* * *

> DOROTHY  
> Not bad for a bunch of librarians. You mind keeping an eye on my bike for me?
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, yeah, as long as you don’t mind me taking it for a spin once in a while. 
> 
> DOROTHY  
> Deal.

… oh god demon!Dean on the red bike

Although it has a wing pattern on it so maybe not his style

… just Dean in general on a motorbike

Help

I completely forgot Robbie gave us that scrap of inspiration :P

* * *

> DEAN   
> You have no idea what’s in Oz. I mean, t-there’s flying monkeys, armies of witches. There’s all kinds of danger. 
> 
> CHARLIE   
> Promise?

See?? She’s moved past the “you’re going to diiie” thing because the episode told a story about that and she’s gained a level in badass and is ready to take on danger competently!

Aaargh this episode has been a trial when it comes to Charlie being alive.

* * *

> CHARLIE  
> Me? What about you crazy kids? You gonna be all right without me? 

You’re literally being sent away so bad things can happen because Dean needs to be all isolated and miserable for his descent arc

How about you don’t come back until season 12 when it all blows over. Just, like… steer clear.

* * *

The garage doors are amazing though.

As is Charlie’s goodbye smile. Aw my heart.

> DEAN  
> Think she’ll be back? 
> 
> SAM  
> Of course. There’s no place like home.

I’ve seen it speculated that this is Sam telling Dean he thinks of the Bunker as home, but I thin with hindsight it’s way more obvious he’s talking about Charlie and Earth…

…

It’s belatedly occurred to me that the 4 main players in this episode are ALL from Kansas

Heh :D


	5. 9x05

statistically, the best weird dog episode

this thought keeps me up at night

* * *

Heh, we’re 5 episodes in and the recap editor turns on “Zeke” hard, like, “BTW YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO TRUST HIM” and finally montages together a little story of why he seems pretty shifty. While managing to miss off his strongest instances of emotional blackmail in 9x01 and 9x03 telling Dean to not tell Sam in the first place, and to send Cas away.

* * *

Props to the rest of the recap for putting Dean being chased by a Yorkie into the montage of crazy stuff though

* * *

I started this episode and immediately stopped it again to look up wtf the First Blade was made from because I had a weird association with oxes in my head, but it’s from an ass, so never mind, because the episode opens on a taxidermied cow-like thing. (It’s dark and blurry and I’m too sleepy for a safari to identify it :P) I have remembered though in Thinman isn’t there that lumberjack on the wall in the motel who has a big cow next to him, and peeps were comparing HIM to Cain as foreshadowing for Dean’s death etc

There’s a sort of farm-y vibe all over this season, tbh.

* * *

I love the shot that pans from the taxidermy wolf to the taxidermy dog to the actual doggy all in a line.

* * *

… I gotta go delve into my tag for this episode to see if anyone wrote about Game of Thrones, because obviously it’s a thing last episode, then here we have the Joffrey rat too. Whether 9x04 just had that because it’s really modern media and they needed confirmation that Sam and Dean would know what it was at this point in time or what, I remember at least  _reading_  meta about these moments here and last episode. Probably about Joffrey because Joffrey rat and “that Joffrey’s a dick”…

Okay apparently not although I can guess it was as far as I remember about the whole “nasty brutish and short” human nature thing with all the edgy dark fantasy… Sort of heralding the dark descent in the goofiest way possible, which, I mean, only this show… I think there may have been meta comparing characters although I don’t remember who correlates to what and tbh I can’t see REALLY strong parallels off the top of my head while not concentrating on it because the ASoIaF characters are pretty complex. Joffrey, though, is pretty destructive violent and petty for its own sake so I’d guess he’s an Abaddon parallel and he’s the only one named and whose depiction in this episode is highlighted… They spend a good long chunk of the season trying to sell her as the real problem but in the end Joffrey really isn’t either… Causes some mayhem along the way but…

* * *

It’s probably bad how wrong the snake guy looks constricting the guy to death and in the silhouette of it we see him being bent in half while embraced by the snake guy. I mean talk about an erotically charged death.

* * *

Oops, I was wrong, this episode starts in the Bunker.

Okay well I still said it was an anomaly whatever happens when I had a point about this last episode >.>

* * *

It’s weird, Sam is definitely favouring the war room table and they have been in general since they got the Bunker. The library seems like such a standard feature of their research in the opening of an episode that I was mildly interested that the end of season 11 had such a focus on the war room. I think the library is what I’m loosely going to call the theme of “make yourself at home” as Cas goes there in 9x03 and 9x22 at the end of the episode, and Sam preferring to hang out there is clearly part of his evolving into liking the Bunker as a home, even if it’s growing on him slowly. Dean has a very different relationship with it as it’s tied to periods of him obsessively researching as far as I recall when it comes to catching him there. This episode follows a very familiar pattern of Sam at the table researching a case and Dean wandering in from elsewhere with tidings. In this case what is up with Kevin NOW.

In this case, death foreshadowing:

> SAM   
> How is that kid still recovering from Branson?
> 
> DEAN   
> What can I say? He’s an amateur. The slippery nipple shots at the Dolly Parton Dixie Stampede nearly killed the guy.

<http://neven-ebrez.tumblr.com/post/68228903961/really-oh-i-hope-not-how-was-kevins-death>

(I was sent a care package of links to meta for this episode… I’ll try to link unorigional thoughts :P)

Dean… he’s barely not a kid any more. Anyway, puts Kevin on humorously presented borrowed time AGAIN after the like 3 other times he’s been declared dead or whatever :P

* * *

Dean is wearing the brown plaid from 8x01 and I always see that as a pretty bad sign… That episode of course kicking off the Carver era codependency arc, and I swear that brown plaid came up some other pertinent time in season 8 relating to it… I think I’d ignore it if this weren’t the only episode a far as I know where Dean wears his friggin plaid from 9x23 that he DIES in

this episode is one of those weird ones which are an actual cornerstone to the season… whether you like it or not

* * *

> DEAN   
> Well, that’s great and all, James Brown, but you’re still recovering from the trials. I think you ought to pace yourself, you know? And the sooner you heal…
> 
> SAM   
> Yeah?

Dean: the sooner I can stop accidentally nearly telling you you’re possessed by an angel

Gadreel facepalms so hard Sam gets a tension headache 

* * *

Anyway at least in this episode Dean is actively trying to keep Sam in the Bunker under house arrest without him even knowing it:

> SAM   
> Shop’s a couple hours away in Enid, Oklahoma. We should at least check it out. Unless there’s some reason you think we shouldn’t. 

… the fact Gadreel boxes Sam up in his head working a case from the safety of the bunker…

* * *

On a lighter note, I don’t actually know where to begin with the innuendo in this sign:

shout out to the “1967″ as well just on principle. 

* * *

Probably just because it’s Snymelo (welcome to the party… Haven’t seen you around here since season 6) I’m on weirdly high alert with Dean and authority figures but I guess the cop wasn’t really his type. On the other hand there’s something weird about the sum of this exchange:

> SHERIFF   
> Such a shame. I used to go hunting with Max. He was a real good egg.
> 
> DEAN   
> Sorry for your loss.
> 
> SHERIFF   
> Thanks.
> 
> […]
> 
> DAVE  
> I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. Max was a… a real pal.
> 
> DEAN   
> Hunting buddy?
> 
> DAVE   
> [looking impressed that DEAN figured this out] Mm. Yeah.
> 
> DEAN   
> Eh, lucky guess

Almost like Dean is seeing an innuendo in that and implying that these guys were all ~hunting buddies~ if you know what I mean wink wink nudge nudge say no more… like I mean they do appear to have actually hunted together, but something about this doesn’t feel JUST like Dean is implying they hunted a lot, if only because the point is so laboriously stressed

* * *

But tbh Dean is being really weird in this scene probably because he thinks this job is slightly ridiculous, partially because Sam is Not Helping by pulling faces and waving around the Joffrey Rat in the background, and partially because he’s squeamish and weird about all sorts of odd things and I guess all the talk of entrails is skeeving him out and he’s keeping a brave face because wtf if the dialogue is having to explain what entrails are to Dean in the surface text

* * *

> DEAN   
> Okay, so, uh… we got a thief who’s jonesing for animal parts, we got a pagan symbol, and we got a human pretzel.

On the one hand, making Dean look dumb again for thinking a cute lil paw print is a pagan symbol, but I guess they need to be on the alert.. still, smrt!Dean meta almost always starts with the friggin’ Zoroastrian symbol in 1x16 so you’d think his general knowledge about various weird symbols should be taken for granted by the writers.

> DEAN   
> All right, well, let’s keep digging. [The camera focuses on an owl.] But, uh, not here. I don’t like the way that one’s looking at me.

On the other hand I forgot it’s literally confirmed he’s wigged the fuck out by the shop so I’m excusing his non-functioning brain even if this is a common feature of Snymelo episodes.

* * *

This episode is very red and green. Which if I remember Zerbe’s season 9 colour coding cheat sheet off the top of my head, are the toxic co-dependency colours. Or else a Christmas theme. I think at the very least the wallpaper in 9x08 is a red and green tartan as well… Anyway here’s the motel:

I remember waaay back at the start of the rewatch I was taking diamonds as a sign of foreboding and evil - that tapered off by season 4, and since season 6 I think the show’s been less visually rich, but there’s always still the odd little thing

* * *

And the interior has green and yellow, again colours together that seem to symbolise toxicity iirc… 

I like the bedsheets are diamond pattern but not THE diamond pattern sheets – which since they were in 11x08 show they haven’t got rid of them or anything :P I am guessing since the motel literally has diamond in the name it’s a reference or in joke, but the symbolism of the shape remains from the early seasons and Sam is the one framed with them all around him as a warning of danger.

(and he has those panthers on the wall behind him – maybe just because this episode is all about animals, but they make a powerful kind of symbol - I recall them in 10x07 and there was tons of meta so I guess if you REALLY care that’s the tag to go snoop through :P)

* * *

Huh, SNART lady is wearing the same string of beads on her wrist as endverse!Cas. With the dark grey shirt it’s vaaaguely evocative of him.

AU where 5x04 is exactly the same but he wears the sunglasses

Anyway they stress the point about hippies (and make fun of vegans, witches AND hippies in an impressively short space of time >.>) so it’s possible those beads just kinda hang out in a prop department box somewhere on the off-chance there’s a hippie character

On the other hand, Cas is off in the world doing god knows what as a human in a timeline which is now edging worryingly close to Endverse chronologically…

… good thing he turns out to just be working in a Gas n Sip :P

I’ll take this as a sign that the universe is shaming Dean, however, since I don’t think there’s a great deal of emotional depth to the situation in this episode unlike last one

* * *

> DYLAN   
> Or a flaxseed scone? It’s wheat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, and surprisingly moist.
> 
> DEAN   
> Let me stop you right there.

I like to imagine Dean has issues with the word “moist” more than the non-content of the scone

mostly because I read somewhere that that word is more uncomfortable the dirtier your mind :P

* * *

> DYLAN   
> His business is funded by hunters, and you know how hunters are. They’re selfish dicks who define themselves by what they kill.
> 
> SAM and DEAN glance at each other.

You know what Snymelo, I’m gonna miss you guys. You have a Buckleming-like touch with the on-the-nose lines 

The “define yourself by what you kill” thing is of course hugely relevant for Dean’s upcoming arc of being consumed by the Mark as the things he kills start to define HIM in turn

and Abaddon specifically symbolising this side of Dean as an externalised character, being killed and internalised as one of the last steps on his way to demonhood…

* * *

> DEAN   
> Okay, so… What are we talking here, some sort of a freaky-ass snake monster? [He sits down opposite SAM.]
> 
> SAM   
> Maybe. The weird thing is snakes either envenomate or constrict. No snake does both.
> 
> DEAN   
> Correction – freaky-ass mega-snake monster.

From my care package:

<http://neven-ebrez.tumblr.com/post/66324679045/i-have-a-q-about-your-9x05-meta-because-im-a>

<http://neven-ebrez.tumblr.com/post/75651303245/well-im-convinced-the-one-eyed-snake-subtext-in>

… tbh though updating for season 11, this is a Dean is bi thread that Snymelo kicked off with the croissookie in 10x13 as far as I remember, and in season 11 Dean suddenly began spewing tons of hybrid imagery phrases in like MOST episodes in the early part of the season, although shout out to 11x08 and “manicorn” because I am still cringing about that… (he starts it with stuff like vamptopus or octovamp or whatever it was back in season 7 and vampirates in season 8 but it becomes thematically his thing in season 10/11, blurring via the croissookie with the Dean vs cake/pie conflict - at this point there’s like a blurry web of a million connecting neurons in the Dean is bi subtext so I won’t keep elaborating :P)

Anyway this is super bi but also being a forerunner of the theme plus probably just really hard to come up with a name, Dean doesn’t hybridise the name so much, but inherently understands the concept while Sam is over there needing a warning like Only Sith Deal In Absolutes

* * *

which, again, with Dean and his ~hunting buddies~ innuendo, shows him grasping a subtext or concept with a very specific mindset

* * *

like Snymelo are weird af but they write serious queer subtext :P

* * *

Also there is pretty much no reason in-text for Chef Leo to be wearing the cowboy get up except obviously he needs to be recognisable to the Colonel, but ignoring storytelling reasons he’s pretty much just dude with a cowboy fetish

* * *

> DEAN   
> Right, so, yesterday, uh, we’re dealing with some sort of a snake monster. Today, it’s a killer kitty.

… re: the posts from Zerbe, uh, euphemisms involving snakes are one thing, synonyms for cats another :P

* * *

I know I complain about Snymelo making Dean act dumb, but tbh the moment where he spots that the Colonel is reacting to the cowboy hat is probably one of the most dramatic smart!Dean moments on the show. I have a weird amount of faith in the Gamble era writers and I always say it… EVEN Snymelo know when it really matters to let Dean be smart. (I mean his portrayal this episode is pretty dramatically all over the place in regards to this, but at least they gave him a good moment :P)

Also h is FACE when he has to ask for the hat knowing this is the weirdest thing this man is ever going to be asked:

He’s like… we’re going to get run out of town.

* * *

Actually you know if this were a NORMAL episode they’d make the connection to a guy in a cowboy hat, ask around for notable characters, or just check the damn CCTV

* * *

> SHERIFF   
> [to THE COLONEL] Good luck getting adopted.

Who knows, maybe this town just has a ton of people who habitually wear cowboy hats. For some reason I noticed someone in a beanie at the hippie place… but aside from that…

* * *

> DEAN  
> Uh, like… you’re tired. You’re on the mend. Okay? Plus, you – you’ve got a sensitive stomach. Last thing we need is you chucking this stuff up. Huh?

I think we’ve seen Dean sick at least 3 or 4 times and Sam maybe once? Sam was toilet-hugging with a hangover in 2x11 and Dean got sick in at least Wishful Thinking, (bonus food poisoning death in Mystery Spot), 9x23, and 11x10… I’m willing to write this down as Dean projecting if you are

On the other hand if he’s specifically referring to alcohol consumption he has a point since for once he’s actually right that Sam’s much easier to get drunk than him :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> Doesn’t look so bad. [He drinks the liquid in one gulp.] I was wrong.

…

Mark of Cain ominous foreshadowing, anyone?

Dean you seriously need to start reading the terms and conditions. You just leap into doing this spell.. I mean to be fair no one explained it would turn him into a dog but yeah :P This episode again is a SUPER GOOFY mirror to the WHOLE demon!Dean arc and he’s now changed into his shirt he dies in at the end of the season

* * *

> DEAN  
> Spell tasted like ass

I know, I know it’s a figure of speech

* * *

… I honestly respect Jensen so much for flinging himself into barking at the mailman like that… It’s possibly the most cringeworthy thing ever but he does it with conviction

* * *

Credit to this episode, we’re 18 minutes in and it’s only just got irredeemably goofy :P

* * *

> SAM hangs up.
> 
> SAM  
> So, apparently, the Inuit spell has some side effects.
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, well, that would have been nice to know  _before_  I downed it! What kind of side effects?

…

* * *

Actually also re: “tastes like ass”

> DEAN  
> Oh, whoa. Hey. I don’t have the urge to sniff butts.
> 
> THE COLONEL  
> Yet.

… you could… probably make a whole  argument for the dog thing as sublimated desires metaphorically represented as dog behaviour except that’s a super weird thought and I’m not up for going down that rabbit hole

Possibly because in this episode, I don’t want to find out what the rabbits would have to say :P

Also because that would lead to a “it’s not gay when you’re under the influence” conclusion which seems a bad place to go, and there’s no working around that unless you wanna make an argument Dean would be into the poodle on a normal day

* * *

> DEAN  
> All right, one more doggy pun out of you, and I’m gonna have your nuts clipped.
> 
> THE COLONEL  
> I hate to break it to you, Hoss. My sack’s emptier than Santa’s after Christmas.

There’s like… no reaction shot to this :P I’d complain about the problems of talking animal co-stars but Dean’s face as he walks is from a Colonel-eye-view and honestly he is magnificent and I’m almost too distracted to remember what I was about to say… :P

There was an impotence theme back in season 6, Snymelo’s only other season aside from this one, although as far as I recall most of the references were in Caged Heat. Considering there’s a theme of impotence vs virility for Dean once he has the Mark, and sets out on his quest to get his magic phallus and then stab a ton of people with it (like… he’s literally accused of feeling “virile” by Crowley in 9x17)… It’s a thing in this season.

* * *

Remember that time Dean fought a pigeon and Sam nearly disowned him

> PIGEON  
> Ha ha. That’s right, Sally. Go cry to mama.

Don’t bring his mom into it >.> but yeah re: the last serious point, the pigeon insults his masculinity as well

* * *

Sam is allowed to drive when Dean has been seriously impaired >.> At least it seemed to be an agreement before they got in the car this time, unlike in 10x12 where de-aged Dean just hopped right in the driver’s seat without thinking about it and only ceded control when it was obvious it wasn’t going to work

I think in general just speaking to Dean’s absolute need to be in control at this point in the story – everything’s slipping from between his fingers, as Charlie leaves, the recap reminds us Gadreel’s slowly heading towards taking Sam from him, and he’s had to ostracise Cas and next episode will face the results of that…

* * *

… in the mean time Dean is hitting on a poodle

* * *

> YORKIE  
> Hey, pretty boy. Over here.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, uh, sorry, pal. I’m done for the day.

In the mean time a Yorkie is hitting on Dean. I swear to god. 

Is this included on those gifsets of people telling Dean he’s pretty and him reacting uncomfortably? I swear I once saw a season 9 one since it happens to him a LOT this season. Abaddon’s already threateningly flattered him and the hunter he meets in 9x11 also calls him pretty I think?

Honestly the “yeah, uh, sorry pal” is a shade off those times Dean defensively reacts to being hit on by dudes as well, and kind of fits the pattern despite Sam not being able to hear it

> YORKIE  
> Bitch, please. If I’m gonna rat someone out, it’s got to be worth my while. I want… a belly rub.
> 
> DEAN  
> You – All right.
> 
> YORKIE  
> Not from you, sweetie. From that big one. [laughs and looks at SAM] Over there. Hi!

…

> YORKIE  
> Ohh, a – a cowboy hat, leather pants. The dude’s a total closet case.
> 
> DEAN  
> Okay, what else can you tell me about the guy other than his outfit?

…….

It’s 1am and I have made very good progress with this episode, so I think it’s time to go to bed >.>

… Good morning I still don’t want to talk about the gay Yorkie confirming all my silly thoughts about the cowboy hat (or accusing someone who likes wearing cowboy get up of being a closet case in general *cough* or the whole thing I was saying about Dean twigging the subtext and now the gay Yorkie shows us queer subtext is easier understood by other queer characters) or Dean’s relatively easy acceptance of offering the belly rub to get what they want before it’s foisted unwillingly on Sam, who has enough consent issues to be getting on with right now…

* * *

OR the fact that Superwiki just has this dog listed under “Gay Yorkie”

* * *

Dean jailbreaks the dogs, and am I forgetting something huge at the end, because there’s 15 minutes left of the episode, nearly half of it in other words, and they’re already heading right to the restaurant. 

> THE COLONEL  
> I didn’t peg you for a softy. 

Dean just accepts the label with a shrug. 

* * *

> SAM  
> Check this out. [He shines the flashlight on a photo of the MAN IN A COWBOY HAT sharpening a knife.] Chef Leo. Think he’s our guy?
> 
> DEAN  
> It’s Okie town. Lots of dudes wear cowboy hats.

oh NOW you say that

* * *

Aah that imagery of Dean peering into fridges full of ick. :P I remember a meta post collecting a lot of imagery of Dean peering into things over season 9 and the camera watching him from inside.

I remember it was linked to his descent arc but I’m going to venture another interpretation with full hindsight of Carver era, as I already said I think Amara is calling to him in a “the ring wants to be found” way in 9x11 and he was fairly helpless to resist taking the mark for that reason. If she’s all bottled up in the Empty right now, the POV of something watching him silently from within these closed spaces could be seen as Amara’s call to him. I think at this point it’s safe to assume she found a way to whisper to the nun who wrote the Book of the Damned (who seems to have been kind of a prophet and/or Metatron figure for her) and so her reach is LIMITED but not completely held back - in the same way Lucifer once managed to whisper from inside his cage (via a nun no less).

* * *

I know the red is presumably just the walls of the restaurant:

but it’s VERY evocative of Cain’s house when he lights it up with his smiting. And of course 9x06 is up next, another episode with the pink light of doom and rooms coated in pink >.>

* * *

It is pretty rude how Chef Leo was using the staff to prepare all his gross meals for him. His waiter comes in with a shark fin on a plate >.> I hope he was at least paying them extra for the overtime and not judging his exotic eating habits. He paid off the guy at the pound with $100 so maybe his downfall was also a race against his funds running out as well as the fact he’s sick and hunters are here to stop him being a terrifying animal-human hybrid. :P Like talk about an unsustainable plan.

… which is metaphorically relevant to the end of the season dammit

* * *

why does Sam always get his neck wounded

* * *

> CHEF LEO  
> How the hell did you do that?
> 
> SAM  
> D-do what?
> 
> CHEF LEO  
> Don’t play coy. I want to know what you are. Oh, screw the sharktopus.

whoops?

Chef Leo IS up to date on all the hybrid names (also, horror movie references I think?) Anyway it is another tiny thing that gives him an affinity to Dean.

* * *

> DEAN  
> You start experimenting with different organs, huh? Traded in the single serving for a combo platter.
> 
> CHEF LEO  
> Well, what can I say? Combination therapy works. I felt stronger, and the effects lasted longer.

I know in the here and now of this episode he gets used as a Gadreel-in-Sam parallel with the bad way to treat mortal illness as Gadreel but of course for Dean there’s duality imagery in everything around him for like, the rest of Carver era for one reason or another. Especially with him eating combination things. Which I feel like I’ve been talking about all episode, but pfft, this is really the important lines about it. Again, with season 11 hindsight (and yeah maybe this wasn’t totally planned back in season 9 but the themes work) Dean propped up by the Mark that won’t let him die basically ends up powered by the Darkness AKA Amara in a direct parallel to how Sam is propped up by Gadreel, making it even more narratively tight how the season bookends itself and Dean’s ironic punishment comes to him for doing this to Sam

* * *

> CHEF LEO  
> Well, I didn’t mean to kill anyone – at first. But if people got in my way, they became collateral damage. Guess you eat enough predators, you start to become one. You are what you eat, right?

Suuuubtle. This is all just repeating for Dean’s benefit stuff already covered in this episode although considering part of it was accusing hunters of “you are what you eat” in essence it’s not a huge leap :P But of course the collateral damage thing is about to become a huge talking point as Kevin’s days are severely numbered.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Do you really think the power you hold over other people’s lives can make up for what you lack in your own?

Ouch >.>

* * *

> CHEF LEO  
> So, dog boy, what do I need to eat to take you down, huh?
> 
> CHEF LEO  
> Ah. [He holds up a container labelled “Wolf Heart.”] Dog on sort-of dog.

And then he also gets killed by dogs at the end of the episode… The question is, since I can’t remember this episode really well, does anyone say “dog-eat-dog” in this episode

To go back to my comment about domestication right at the start of the episode, re: the taxidermy wolf and dog side by side, the dog imagery for Dean is very much part of his “blunt little instrument” conflict and being made in this season into Crowley’s pet hellhound. Which generally implies domestication and leash, but he rejects that when working for Crowley in season 10 – here in this episode he’s the alpha of the pack and he does frequently act as a lone wolf pre-domestication. I stretched my mind for where the lone wolf stuff comes into it because my brain was telling me it sounds very Ghostfacers, something about “two lone wolves”… But I knew there was a serious point and…

>  [4.14 Sex and Violence (transcript)](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supernaturalwiki.com%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3D4.14_Sex_and_Violence_%28transcript%29&t=YzQ3NzgyMTlmZjVhNzRiY2Y4N2IzMjE4NWUzNTMwYWRhYWEwY2ZmZSx4T2cxMlZIMQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F147355149038%2F9x05-rewatch-statistically-the-best-weird-dog&m=1)
> 
> Well, here’s the thing, Nick. See, we’re kinda  **lone wolves** …
> 
> [3.13 Ghostfacers (transcript)](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supernaturalwiki.com%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3D3.13_Ghostfacers_%28transcript%29&t=OTJmN2RiYjk3YWI2YjU1MjgxMWVjNWZjZjU4OTIzYmU3M2M5ZmMwYix4T2cxMlZIMQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F147355149038%2F9x05-rewatch-statistically-the-best-weird-dog&m=1)
> 
> Two  **lone wolves**. And two  **lone wolves**  need, uh…other wolves.

Those dorks >.> Plot-relevant dorks to this season though, especially as brothers parallels, AND they split up and end up lone wolves in season 9.

Anyway I guess what I’m saying is Dean may act the dog here but in a way his arc takes him through the whole pet dog thing to the wild undomesticated wolf… Considering he’s affected by primordial powers I think that’s quite fitting. Abaddon, too, his dark mirror for the season, is very much no one’s pet. And in the end he’s restored to humanity, which did the domesticating of the wolves into dogs in the first place. So I think there’s a lot of symbolism in him just surviving this arc?

* * *

More heart eating while muttering mumbo jumbo, which goes right back to 8x03 and the season 3 theme of hearts. I said 8x03 was super important for setting up tons of the emotional stuff for the Mark of Cain arc, with Dean idly actually wondering what it would be like to have that power and seemingly very tempted by the darkness. So like THAT goofy episode, THIS goofy episode brings all those themes back and gives them to us fresh in this season to let us know it’s all back in play, and now we’re really going for it.

* * *

As well as that, Chef Leo transforms himself after eating the wolf heart into what is basically a functional SPN werewolf:

basically channelling the power of the monster without truly becoming it – I remember waaaay back in 1x02 commenting on how the Wendigo lore was that they became monstrous from eating human flesh, and although later in season 6 we get the lore that Eve creates monsters, this seems to take us back to that idea that the human being can become the monster all by their self if they really fall into that mindset and access the right powers. Dean also, over this season, becomes more and more  _functionally_  demon!Dean before dying and it being cemented with actual transformation. The sense of transforming within his own body and under the power of nothing but his actions and the dark magic influence on him are all here. As well as that, the Mark of Cain arc is linked with a few werewolf episodes – 9x12 this season and 10x04 next season (and 8x04 carrying on the themes of 8x03 where they were compared frequently to werewolves anyway, and of course 8x04 was a Robbie episode so seeing as he’s the one who pitched the Mark of Cain story, we see the influence there)

* * *

Dean’s face when he realises he’s walked Leo into a trap to be mauled by dogs is terrifying. It’s his torture look >.>

 

*Dean casually watches a man get torn to shreds by dogs*

> CHEF LEO  
> Sorry. Wolf trumps dog.
> 
> DEAN  
> Maybe. But not a whole pack.

Is this a “stronger together” TFW thing because that’s pretty dark :P

* * *

Anyway Dean leaves the Colonel to his vegan diet >.>

> THE COLONEL  
> I’ll miss you, too. And by the way, as an honorary dog, there’s something you should know. Dogs aren’t really man’s best friend.
> 
> DEAN  
> What are you talking about?
> 
> THE COLONEL  
> I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but the real reason we were put here was to… [he barks]

This HAUNTS me

(the honorary dog thing is pretty cute though, horrific dark themes connected to it aside)

I’m reminded of all the warning barking in 8x22 and 9x02 (hey Kuma!) and I stand by the dogs being messengers of God thing.

And of course Dean losing the power to communicate and not hearing the important information is very relevant to all his leaping into terrible decisions this season without adequate warning. I think at this point it’s just like, the universe is cosmically avoiding telling him anything >.>

* * *

> SAM  
> Yeah, I’m fine.

THE ONE TIME SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY FINE IN THIS SHOW AND HE CAN’T TRUST IT AT ALL

Aaaarrghghgghfgh I hate this show

* * *

> DEAN  
> Who the hell knows? He was all jacked up on juice, you know? He was possessed by – by something he couldn’t control. It was… [long pause] It was a – a matter of time before it completely took over. You can’t reason with crazy, right?

^ see also “Aaarrghghgghfgh”

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, I do. Trust me, Sam. You got nothing to worry about.

^ and that

* * *

…

Oh no.

Heaven most certainly can wait for me to watch the next episode.


	6. 9x06

Or: thankfully we’ve already exhaustively talked this episode into the ground so I can skip it entirely

tag yourself I’m the ghost longingly reaching for them

* * *

Did you know you go 40 whole seconds into this recap without seeing Cas? Apparently there’s other stuff happening in this episode like angel war, and Crowley vs Abaddon

who knew

* * *

100 points to whoever did this recap though for the re-cutting of the 9x03 “Castiel cannot stay here” bit to the clip of him walking into the main room and smiling at Dean because it totally doesn’t look like it’s singling them out romantically or anything

* * *

Couple of things about cold open guy: he’s going to kill himself, but then chooses not to but then the Rit Zien shows up and does it for him anyway, effectively taking away his choice in the matter and as we later see with him smiting people over petty things like being “kinda bummed” is missing all the nuance. Which includes missing the really specific detail of the man’s choice not to kill himself  _despite_  how he feels, and obviously the hope or second chance feeling that could have given his life. Makes you wonder though about the presentation between subconscious desire and conscious actions:

> JOE  
> Who are you? Did the lady from the hotline send you?
> 
> INTRUDER  
> No. You did.

Not emotionally related to this, but one of the Carver era themes and especially from around these parts and ESPECIALLY for Cas is duty vs desire (Dean too I guess but he’s like, locked in “duty” mode and stuff like Cas being sent away is yanking the rug out from under his feet before he can ever even flirt with desire, while Cas is on an emotional quest with sliiiightly more option for self-determination, even if it doesn’t get him where he wants to go by the end of this season). But anyway I think this can relate thematically by also being about this subconscious yearning – but also forcing the consideration of choice, and at the end of the episode for Cas at least he gets to choose to live by killing the Rit Zien and conquering what would essentially be giving into the dark desire. (But of course the Rit Zien leaves him with the “angel or human” question showing his real journey has just begun)

I think before we get into anything else in the episode, though, we have a parallel which tbh speaks strongest to me of Sam in 8x23/9x01 and the Rit Zien as either Dean or Gadreel. Going forwards into this season considering this is the part of the show casting Gadreel as a villain and we’re dealing with the consequences of him forcing Dean to exile Cas, then yes, mostly him. (Be wrong not to mention Dean though as at least initially in 9x01 before Gadreel forced him to secrecy, a co-conspirator on the consent violation of Sam’s choice to die. I believe the analysis that Dean didn’t put much thought into anything past making Sam alive again :P) It’s sort of backwards as they force Sam to live through coercion and of course the Rit Zien is going around making the choice for people that they should die, deciding what’s best for them with his supposed better knowledge of the situation.

The way in which the man changes his mind, I can practically  _see_  [@dustydreamsanddirtyscars](https://tmblr.co/m4J6yls3rYvF2fUHLnY_jJQ)‘s comparative gifset if she gets this far, as it’s from a photo of himself with his mother, presumably. 

This comes almost a year before they start breaking out the Mary pictures regularly, as far as I recall, at least for DEAN, but in 8x23 in the deleted scenes Dean tries to emotionally blackmail Sam for some reason or another with the same picture (i’ve honestly never been sure of the context of that one - it feels like they just wanted to get the picture in there, and we know Carver has a serious thing for it as the family photo album plays such an important role in main arc stuff most years), so it’s at least in spirit, like… around. I think thanks to 8x23 it can be connected to Sam again for now, at least in terms of the fact Sam bottled out of closing the gates for family… Going forwards it’s much more obviously a Dean motif and the most effective use of the picture on him is in 10x23, and then Amara, his dark mirror, is seemingly at least partially swayed by the love in Dean’s heart for Mary from seeing the same picture and halts the self-destructive end of the entire universe by reaching out to Chuck for one more attempt at a chat.

Anyway, note to self, worth keeping this guy in mind over the rest of the rewatch, especially as the direct mirror scenario of him changing his mind via a picture of his mother obviously ties him so strongly to Dean, and so gives us a good early example to discuss his behaviour as self-destructive or suicidal as the situation is  _so_ clear here but when we get as far down the line as the last couple of episodes of season 11 (and it was a Berens episode where Amara looked at the picture and had this moment herself – and since 9x06 starts this trend would be a callback to this episode) there’s a lot SUBTEXTUALLY about giving up, suicide, etc, but it’s not very well un-packed, for example, the meeting with Dean and Amara in the woods in 11x21 has been paralleled to the same urge to jump into the abyss as suicide, but all season long that was buried in the language of how Amara spoke to Dean as a love interest, so it has to be unpacked that he’s being courted by this dark desire.

(Yes, 9x06 is a proto-mytharc episode for season 11, fight me :P)

* * *

I’ve been writing in this rewatch how since season 7 Cas’s journey has been taking him to behind the counter of a Gas n Sip (see: 7x23, 8x22) but it’s still so sad to actually see him there.

Like, this is good storytelling that he ends up here but aaargh.

It’s something about the purple stripes on his sleeves. Setting aside colour symbolism (and pink and purple are often the colours of death and despair on this show) it’s just such a break from his normal choice in clothes and so obviously NOT his uniform… And then he has the blue vest over the top, a new uniform, a new mission… Draped in humanity if you will (although he’s already contemplating giving it up at the end of this episode)

I was keeping track and as far as I saw 8x22 was the first time we saw real Gas n Sip branding, although they’ve been vaguely blue and yellow since season 7 I think. Not sure how far in advance this was planned but I like that these colours are connected. I think blue and yellow are linked to duty and obligation if I remember Zerbe’s colour meta well enough (it’s based on 9x01-7 :P)

* * *

Also, while I’m still staring mournfully at Cas filling the coffee pot and working up the nerve to press play, I think this episode is a reflection to 5x03. With some significant things changed, but nonetheless. Features Sam and Dean split up, on Sam’s side a story more about in the end a demon willingly taking human blood, rather than people forcing him to drink demon blood. Meanwhile Cas and Dean work together, a member of TFW is working a regular job trying to be “Steve” like Sam tried to be “Keith” I think it was… I think the Rit Zien comes up in the context of the war with Raphael (if not, Berens was clearly thinking it because 9x13 directly brings it up - I think he’s harping on it :P), and 5x03 is where Cas really first picks that fight and makes it personal… For Sam and Cas there’s a sense of running away and/or emotionally hiding from the things they’ve done, but being forced to confront it by the past violently being visited on them, again with the demon blood, and the Rit Zien showing up on the door step… Oh and Dean kinda hangs out and helps, is preoccupied with Cas’s sex life, and fan fiction gaps rule the day :P

(In this case, a pretty much direct line of “you reap what you sow” from 5x03 > 9x06 for forcing heteronormativity on the angel. Don’t look bummed out he has a date, Dean. He thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do because of you :P)

(I’m getting ahead of myself >.>)

* * *

“What team is he playing for?” 

… oh this episode :’)

I’ve already punted this into my queue to post as a gifset all by itself, long before I post this, but from 9x03 we had Dean pouring coffee and now Cas:

  


And I dunno what it is but this seems like such a thing :P Cas is watching these guys with their sports conversation drink the coffee HE poured, drinking his own cup and trying to do as the humans do, using them as his model to blend in by mimicking their movements. Dean pours his own coffee but in 9x03 that moment was used to show him in utter isolation, specifically with the focus, thanks to that episode, on losing Cas (and we know from this episode’s recap it ends with Cas walking towards him like in a romance before Dean has to shut it down and send him away). And we also know Cas has learned most of his cues on general existence in recent years from Dean:

In this case a weird inversion of the theme where  _humanity_  is a metaphor for  _Dean_.

* * *

There’s gambling chips among the keyrings on the counter. Not sure anyone’s commented on that before, I feel like they MUST have with the depth this fandom goes, but hey, gaming references are always interesting. Cas is out of the game, here. And that’s how when he opens that stack of newspapers he knows he has to forward the weird deaths onto the people whose game it still is.

* * *

> NORA  
> You’re not like the other sales associates. There’s… something different about you.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I can assure you, there’s – there’s not.
> 
> NORA  
> I know these things. You’re … hmm … special.

“Haha look at me I am a normal human” *sweats nervously* 

But yeah Cas’s fear of being “outed” as not normal underpins this episode from the moment we hear that “whose team is he playing for” - like, ignoring the blatantly obvious queer reading, he needs to prove he’s a normal human, and in the grander scheme his conflict is between these two sides of angel vs human… 

in the here and now Cas is playing normal human who does normal human things and there’s nothing suspicious about him because he is in danger from so many sides. OBVIOUSLY he faked something to get the job (and there’s a crack post about his application but it’s true how vulnerable that makes him that he has no pre-existing human identity, i.e. the danger behind “where have you been all my life” having such a hard answer)… And so he’s going to lick his coffee stirrer, try to be a very good worker so no one gets suspicious or just kicks him out on principle, high five people if he sees other humans doing it, and if he thinks his boss is crushing on him and asks him on a date, an important Thing Humans Do, he’ll do it. 

So to go back to the queer reading the sports metaphor presents us with, Cas needs to play the straight cis guy which is the acceptable “team” to be on here for his own safety.

(And then Dean, a ghost from his old life, wanders into his place of work loudly talking about fighting heavenly battles >.>)

* * *

Being outed by well-meaning friends is an exercise in not murdering the people you love :P

* * *

“HELP”

I like the holy hand grenade looking thing in the far right, the symbol for leather shoes next to the WHY?, and the cute scary dog. I think the red is teaching himself the symbols even if he has no idea wtf they are.

“THERE IS NO SEQUENCE”

“not making sense of this”

* * *

Poor Kevin >.>

* * *

> SAM  
> Research. We comb through the library, see if we can find anything else on Elamite.
> 
> DEAN (reading the title of the book)  
>  _Zimmerman’s Encyclopedia of Extinct Languages … Volume One: Adai to Atakapa._  How many volumes are there?
> 
> KEVIN  
> 24.
> 
> DEAN’s mouth works soundlessly.
> 
> KEVIN, reassuringly  
> Don’t worry, we’ve found them all.
> 
> DEAN  
> Awesome.
> 
> DEAN’s phone rings.
> 
> DEAN  
> There is a God.

CAS ALWAYS SAVES DEAN

* * *

You think I’m being silly but on the other hand Dean takes that call as a sign of the divine at work, and A: I’m still suspicious about Metatron as the false God manipulating events right now this season, and B: Dean n Cas perpetually express faith in each other as often as they renounce their faith in higher powers. It may be a silly moment, but it’s thematically tight.

* * *

Anyway this has always bugged me that Dean seems to know better than Sam and Kevin that this is kind of pointless – they shouldn’t waste time reading ALL the volumes, rather turn to the entry actually ABOUT Elamite while splitting up to read other books on adjacent subjects rather than combing through books which might only mention it in passing. Encyclopaedias don’t work like that… in this case the 2 who are college educated/were studying to go to college seem to have worse research methods than Dean, who will still read the entire library if he has to, but knows a dead end search when he hears one. (He’s managed to find the thing they’re looking for many times in a research battle, but I think he knows a losing one when he sees it because I refuse to believe NO ONE in the study group didn’t realise how silly this plan was. Dean has a different method of researching to Sam (who seems to have the same as Kevin) and we’ve seen those strengths in both of them played to many times. >.>

* * *

> DEAN  
> You want to meet up at the latest scene? You want me to pick you up? What? 

*Cas spilling his Big O everywhere in the background*

Their phone sex is so weird.

* * *

Of my personal experience of doing the exact same fucking thing, I can say with certainty it could be worse. Cas could be being attacked by wasps while he’s being drenched in the sugary syrup.

* * *

I love his “wtf Cas” face

opposed to other times he’s supposedly had a “wtf Cas” face by the script and actually looked like he got hit by a truck full of feelings.

* * *

Btw 

> CASTIEL  
> I … am busy. 

is quite possibly the bitchiest line Cas ever has and I love it

this whole ‘jilted lover’ thing is going to stay with me my whole life :P

* * *

Dean rushes off to help, having only pulled on a jacket over his single layer he’d been wearing, not even stopping to change into normal Dean outdoors clothes

Considering he dresses with the reliability of a Sim with 3 set outfits in a modest variety of colours, that’s significant

* * *

Sam trails Dean all the way to the door asking emotionally painful questions he has no idea are that bad because he doesn’t know Cas rudely hung up on Dean after refusing to engage him in friendly conversation and blowing off the suggestion they should meet and Dean pick Cas up

> SAM  
> So, he said nothing about where he is or – or what he’s been doing?
> 
> DEAN  
> This is Cas. In case you forgot, he’s not exactly Chatty Cathy.
> 
> SAM  
> And you’re not even gonna see him when you’re in Idaho?
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, like I said, as long as he’s catnip for angels, he’s keeping his distance.

* * *

> KEVIN  
> In other words, a perfect excuse to bail out on research.
> 
> DEAN  
> (brief pause) You got me.

Thanks for the perfect excuse for a perfect excuse, Kevin.

For Dean’s side of things with this ‘jilted lover’ set up, it’s obvious he’s using Kevin’s excuse to escape questioning, but it’s interesting where you could diverge on why. Obviously, he feels guilty about Cas and can’t say the whole truth to Sam about why Cas has left, AND he’s talking to Gadreel, reassuring him he’ll stay away and that he KNOWS that he’s been warned that Cas is bad news (I think maybe without actually watching the rest and checking, Dean never directly tells Sam he’s even seen Cas?) 

The Gadreel thing between them (almost using Gadreel as a foil as if Dean is sneaking around behind his back) adds that clandestine feeling to Dean meeting up with his “ex-lover” on the down low while he’s in town on work… Having to deny he’s even seeing Cas (even if Dean knows how pissily Cas hung up on him so it’s not like he’s assuming he’s running off for a weekend of love or something) immediately just makes all their interactions illicit.

* * *

Cas is up a ladder fiddling with the light and then has to descend down to talk about brushing his teeth with his boss and I am dead of symbolism.

I mean at least he didn’t, like,  _fall_  off the ladder

* * *

I still think Nora kinda trapped him on the sleeping bag thing – if he had stuck around in the Gas n Sip she could easily have milked him for favours, unpaid overtime and so on and so forth because she KNEW he was sleeping at the store. Literally the first thing she says after the “I have a bed… and a home” line is “oh you’re so responsible… hey babysit for me.” 

She has him at a power imbalance now waaay beyond normal boss and staff, because she has instant grounds to fire him and she’s not stupid. I mean, like, yeah, you could think she was just ditzily fooled by him being a hard-working employee and demonstrating the responsibility to babysit via wanting to do well at this minimum wage job, but I credit Nora with more intelligence than that. (And I don’t think she’d have ever SAID anything – her phrasing of “I’ve been afraid to ask” is very tactful and seems to put her at the emotional disadvantage – so I think she could happily have strung Cas along as doing ‘just’ favours for her but knowing that he’s in her pocket.) It’s almost like having him on the emotional hook for unrequited attraction, which this is what this is seemingly played as, but nah. She asks him on a vaguely phrased “date” because they both play by these heteronormative roles of how men and women talk to each other, but she knows she’s getting a babysitter who *can’t* screw up, and he knows he’s fitting in and succeeding and blending in as a regular straight male human.

> NORA  
> I’ve been afraid to ask. I-I don’t want to take advantage of you as my employee, and I certainly don’t want to jeopardize our working relationship. But as a working single mom, it’s hard enough to get a date, let alone meet a really great guy.

You probably shouldn’t have told him he was special 10 minutes ago

Just saying

He’s like:

And then

> NORA  
> And … tomorrow’s my night off, and I know you’re off, too, and … I was just wondering if there’s any chance you’re… free tomorrow night?

> NORA  
> You’re the best! 

… and THEN he has a small smile once she’s gone and he’s realised that he’s successfully, though maybe not sure WHY or HOW, done a Human Thing that Humans Do when his co-worker who kept flattering him has apparently asked him out… he is clearly assimilating much better than he thought and he’s excited that maybe his life is actually going well for once (aw Cas no). 

There are a myriad ways to read his confusion with the situation of being sort of browbeat into going on the “date” followed by hesitant excitement that aren’t just that he’s into Nora and distracted by her, and to go back to me complaining tiredly about this in 9x03 where there’s no depth or nuance, they just try to portray Cas as ~heterosexual~ even so far as having him talk about hedonism and the distraction it offered after the fact rather than allowing him to be at all uncomfortable about the horrible turn it all took on him, when it would be quite justifiable to treat it at the very least as a tainted memory…

Anyway this is Cas trying to “live normal” which I wrote oodles about for Dean [in season 2 here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/146708762873/elizabethrobertajones-im-really-quite-fond-of), but I guess Cas just gets the one episode what with poor allotment of his episodes over this time. I don’t think there’s an El Sol in this episode and they relate strongly to this arc… but you know what we do have: the sun on the window of the Gas n Sip >.>

* * *

Honestly if the sun thing heralded Mary’s return between the introduction of El Sol in 2x20 and the actual friggin sun being a thing in 11x23 I will flip a table :P

* * *

> SHERIFF  
> Well, Joe in there had the suicide hotline on speed dial. The gal before him was a shut-in. Had enough antidepressants in her medicine cabinet to stock a pharmacy. The first victims – a married couple out of Sugar City. Pretty much a walking billboard for no-fault divorce.

With later hindsight of 11x06 the second victim, the shut-in, seems like even more of a Cas mirror >.>

(And again Berens episode to Berens episode – obviously he likes exploring these themes)

(the other victims being a suicidal man, and someone going through rough romantic times *clears throat* at least this episode we know the OFFICIAL subtext is “jilted lover” so I don’t need to explain much more :P)

* * *

> SAM  
> Yeah, we’re almost through the texts over here. (pause) We got nothing.

Surpriiise

* * *

> DEAN  
> Have you tried Professor Morrison?
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah, he’s unreachable. He took a sabbatical to live amongst the Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea. Needless to say, we’re pretty burnt.

Do you ever just… trust someone, implicitly? :P When I first hit this episode I had no idea A: what a Buckleming was or B: that we had a new writer on staff, but I did know that professor guy annoyed the crap out of me, and was deeply unfunny for his screen time, and then this new episode has a cute continuity nod within the first 10 minutes like “you’re never ever going to see this character again” and I felt myself smile.

(Berens has a weird habit of always striking me as being the writer most in tune with Buckleming continuity and that gives me some hope for season 12 if those 3 are the last standing “old guard” writers who aren’t the showrunner, who himself has always patched up the plot after them very well :P)

More seriously though, Carver era whittles away all their old resources and friends etc until there’s only a couple left, and leaves them in a position where they have to rely pretty much exclusively on bad choice friends like Crowley and Rowena… In the here and now it’s a microcosm of that, by taking away one resource and forcing Sam to deal with the bad choice help offered by Crowley (and this run of episodes from 9x02-9x10 paints Crowley as the best choice option for the fight between him and Abaddon and this episode is about as sympathetic as he gets during his Bunker incarceration), and of course that eventually ends up with 9x11 and Dean trusting Crowley from then on out…

* * *

Also Sam wanders away from Kevin to have this conversation with Dean, but rather than hide beyond the pillar like Dean did, he leans on it, still in the ~same room~ as Kevin:

  


As well as that of course Dean gets all the way across the room and puts that pillar between him and Sam/Gadreel before he even whispers Cas’s name, while Sam of course has nothing to hide and just answer the phone and talks openly in front of Kevin before he moves just for the sake of not disturbing Kevin working. And then these two shots from the same place, have Sam relaxed and full body, still drinking his coffee, while we had Dean in close up, which suits secrecy and intimacy better.

And of course in parallels THIS side of the conversation, Sam has his open mug of coffee from the communal pot, he’s presumably sharing with Kevin as they work, while Dean has a closed off cup:

Not even bought at the Gas n Sip, already demonstrated repeatedly to be a viable source of coffee in town, where CAS poured the communal pot, and the random sampling of Humanity he was mimicking were drinking from it. Yet more coffee = isolation for Dean imagery.

…

Oh and again, the fact that Dean is staring  _directly_  at Cas all through this exchange and that’s the TWIST at the end of this call. As with his earlier call, Cas is concealed from Sam/Gadreel.

Watching with hindsight is horrific though because of Dean’s eyes trained on Cas with that sad expression.

I’m reminded of my amusement in 8x08 about Dean’s annoyance and distraction when talking to Sam while his eyes were continually drifting over to Cas…

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/143394414260/just-dean-being-totally-distracted-by-cas-while>

Again, that was outside a Gas n Sip and Sam was talking the case at Dean, and, to take this on a little circular journey, was the first of his attempts to talk to Cas (“what’s the word, Cas?”) which eventually gets around to “talk to me” and “I’m afraid I might kill myself” which, of course, takes us right back to the conclusion of this episode and Cas vs the Rit Zien.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, there’s one guy there who is nothing if not well-rested.
> 
> SAM  
> Crowley?
> 
> DEAN  
> I’m just saying we’re not keeping him chained up for the one-liners.

… technically you sort of are. He had no real reason to be in 9x04, for example, except for the one-liners :P

Dean is the one who makes the call on trusting the monster chained up in their basement, who just by his presence and position has been mirroring Gadreel-in-Sam this entire time.

And he’s the one who makes the call here on trusting Crowley, and has of course more ominous foreshadowing shades of the Drowley yet to come:

> DEAN  
> Just be careful, all right? Don’t fall for any of his “quid pro quo” crap.

As Dean stacks up more and more irony for later in the season.

* * *

> SAM  
> That sounds like a real case. Dean, I should be there.
> 
> DEAN  
> Naw, man. That’s – That’s uh … not necessary. No, I, uh – I got this one covered.

Okay so at this point Sam doesn’t even mention Cas beyond who gave Dean the lead, although he wonders if he should be there just to help Dean who he assumes is working the case alone.

So of course, cut to Dean staring at Cas, with romantic music and all.

Pffffffffft

then:

> GIRL  
> He dumped me, Jace.

Pffffffffft

Just taking a moment to admire the intricacy of this set up – of the surprise of Dean watching Cas, of Dean hiding from Sam by omission what he’s doing, of the entire premise of the early part of the season/this episode to keep Cas a ~guilty forbidden pleasure~ for Dean, the aggressive NEED for him to hide his interest in working with Cas (at this point “working cases” is pretty much code for dating pffft) just the fact there’s a very deliberate effort to show-don’t-tell this, but with manipulative effects of music and camera showing us these things in this order, to pull it all together to give us the most ridiculous Destiel moment ever…

And it’s not like Dean is just  _watching_ , he’s trying to master an impulse to go see Cas DESPITE everything, and he  _loses_  to that desire. Aka, duty vs desire, and he lets Cas win out.

(Which is a thing now that also in 9x09 he gives in and tells Cas BEFORE he loses control of Gadreel, which I think is probably the single most important thing in keeping their relationship together at all that happens in this stretch of the show >.> At least it earns Dean Cas’s unconditional trust and help in 9x10)

* * *

Anyway this girl, who has been “dumped in front of everyone”, seems like a Cas mirror for obvious reasons:

> GIRL  
> Like, why couldn’t he just dump me on Facebook like a normal person? (pause) I’ve been destroyed. Socially and romantically … totaled. (pause) I know. I’m just so embarrassed, Jace. I could just die.

But she comes across strongly as a Dean parallel, almost like she’s been patched into their conversation as we’re still following someone on the phone, someone moving out of sight of everyone and ducking behind the school bus much as Dean did behind the pillar.

Obviously Dean did the dumping, but he feels as wronged by it as Cas does because Gadreel MADE him do it, and her thing is SHAME and embarrassment – Dean feels shameful about what he did and that’s been obvious since 9x04, and so like with the other victim we see dying on screen, who is a reverse cause and effect actions of the Gadreel decision, she’s a reverse cause and effect of kicking Cas out – the dumpee instead. But she has her green jacket and her green eyes and pretty tears, and even a load of bracelets like old school Dean used to wear (I still think of them as a part of the Dean aesthetic even if he quit wearing them a long time ago >.>)… she is to Dean as Hael was to Cas.

* * *

Can’t believe the freakin’ cupid delivery service is still in business after the angel fall spell, like, they’ve really got their shit together to bounce back from that so quickly.

Maybe it was a front organisation all along, so they kind of had a place to go to immediately, and their job had them on earth in vessels all the time ANYWAY so all they really lost was their wings and now they have to take their trucks everywhere instead of flying.

* * *

> DEAN  
> I’ll have some beef jerky and a pack of menthols.

I have no idea if this was scripted or if the whole thing was a “just say some shit to introduce yourself” and the forbidden outtakes are a practice run or whatever… but Dean asking for cigarettes does remind me that season 9 is one of my seasons I’m sure Dean was smoking except they’d never actually do more than jokingly imply it (like they did way back in Born Under A Bad Sign with regular cigarettes or any of the implied times about Dean smoking pot)… I generally figure Mark of Cain Dean or demon!Dean would give zero shits about his health, but I think 9x01 onwards is stressful enough in a way Dean isn’t really used to dealing with that it could trip him back into smoking (I figure he quit at the very least all through Gamble era, purgatory, and the majority of season 8)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Gee, it’s nice to see you, too, Cas.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> It’s … Steve now. (gesturing towards his employee name tag) And… uh, you know you surprised me.
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, the feeling is mutual. I mean, I knew you had to lay low from the angel threat, but, uh, wow. This is some cover.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> My Grace is gone. What did you expect?

Re: being outed at work: after Dean says “angel threat” Cas drops his voice and heads to the furthest end of the counter, making Dean follow him to finish this conversation – we know Nora is in the back since she appears from there eventually, so Cas is moving Dean as far as possible from his employer

* * *

What else… Well, hearing Dean say “the feeling is mutual” to Cas in whatever context makes my heart fluttery

I know I broke my teeth on accidental fandom-wide newsletters and earned my reputation with this episode by applying the dang longing retcon to

> CASTIEL  
> Do you have any idea how hard it was? When I fell to earth, I didn’t just lose my powers. I – I had nothing. 

* * *

Oh wait, cupid interruption. New ground to break! Dean’s weird face at the cupid :P

The whole shot is weirdly red and just from this angle, with Cas blocking the sun:

I should probably be putting “cupid” in shock quotes but tbh at this point it’s been a couple of years since I read this factoid about prop reuse and I’m not un-seeing it any time soon

Red has a dual meaning of danger (which obviously it was heavily used for in 9x05) and is linked to Dean’s descent arc, but it can also casually mean passion as well…

Cas takes a delivery of the most romantically coded beer on the show, which I think if I remember this discussion correctly (and knowing the fandom’s love of reading beer labels) has never shown up again since, and in both times is in context of deliveries… Beer they don’t get to drink, but is being dangled in front of them…

Dean’s face at the delivery man is possibly just a personal space violation thing because you can forget that he actually  _has_ personal space when it comes to people who aren’t Cas or he’s just feeling weird and paranoid about the interruption… They’re back to discussing the mundanities of the job rather than heaven, but Dean is just generally weird about his personal time with Cas – like with taking a little walk to distance himself from Sam and Kevin before talking to Cas, interruptions blight most of their conversations. Dean doesn’t do well with anyone getting in between him and Cas talking, and I think he tends to see their conversations as inherently private. His discomfort is interesting just on the principle that he clearly feels it very frequently and consistently when it comes to keeping Cas to himself. And there’s the threat that ANYONE could be an angel who would hurt Cas if they knew who he was…

Which makes me think Dean WAS eyeing up the man in case he was an angel, but he’s just going about his business…

… so the fact he’s strongly associated with cupids is all the funnier

* * *

Dean also seems to take a very long run up to understand this is ALL Cas can do since it’s still the subject in the next conversation… I wonder if the guilt and shame he feels about Cas is that he’s trying to tell himself that Cas is “just” doing this as a cover. He understands cover identities well enough – understanding this is a LIFE Cas is making takes him a good chunk of the episode – I think until the car conversation outside the school? Maybe even not totally until the very end, when of course Cas is now doubting if this is REALLY the life he wants because of course they’re at cross-purposes.

> DEAN  
> Well, the feeling is mutual. I mean, I knew you had to lay low from the angel threat, but, uh, wow. This is some cover.

&

> DEAN  
> Wow. So you went from fighting … heavenly battles to nuking taquitos?

For now

* * *

In between this, a platonic rejection! Crowley refuses to read the thing for Sam. (This episode, on top of everything else, is REALLY well structured – Berens has a knack for scenes flowing meaningfully into each other)

> SAM  
> Because I was there that night. I saw what humanity did to you. (Crowley scoffs very quietly.) Like it or not, there’s still a little part of you that’s not a douche.

Sam getting to be the token representative of humanity for once, since that “humanity” is his own blood. He calls on Crowley’s new-found empathy, and Dean’s mercy:

> SAM   
> Crowley, the only reason you’re alive is because my brother thought you would be useful. So far you’ve done Jack.

Despite Sam being the humanity in Crowley, he doesn’t actually use his own compassion here – or rather, he’s being super intimidating and manipulative with the Abaddon threat he levels at Crowley, and letting  _his own humanity_  which he put  _into_  Crowley, hopefully be what reacts – either from kindness or fear.

It’s actually fascinating.

* * *

Anyway, re: previous point on the DeanCas side of the story:

> DEAN  
> This is not you, man. You are above this. Come on. 

This is another one of their conversations that gets interrupted. Cas finally gets to say his part on Dean aggravating him over this point:

> CASTIEL  
> No, Dean. I’m not. I failed at being an angel. Everything I ever attempted came out wrong. But here … at least I have a shot at getting things right. I guess you can’t see it, but … there’s a real dignity in what I do – human dignity.

But all Dean can do is react and look sad and horrified as it starts to sink in that Cas isn’t  _playing_ at being a sales associate. He really and truly MEANS to make this his life.

In a way I think this actually is good for Cas just to have had the holiday where he got to do simple work and be rewarded for it – the “human dignity” thing turns into a pop shot at what he’s actually got when Nora immediately asks him to clean the toilets because it’s subverted into a joke, but Cas isn’t taking it that way as an indignity, even when it happens to him. I think this writing is definitely framed from Dean’s POV in a way, just to make us feel bad for Cas, as Dean’s being put through the maximum guilt trip by seeing Cas this way (and that’s a necessary thing for Dean’s side of the story as we need to have his regret about kicking Cas out truly sold, so that toilet thing isn’t mocking Cas in the writing so much as showing what Dean would perceive as indignity TO Dean as part of the process of beating him up over this :P).

I don’t think this is a particularly great coping mechanism for Cas’s side of things – Steve practically counts as one of our Carver era run-and-hide characters as it’s clearly coming across that Cas has taken himself off the chessboard out of his own guilt, shame and self-loathing, but what he HAS found here is a kind of menial work he can absorb himself in, and compared to him falling into TV land next time he feels so terrible about himself and all the things that happen to him, he’s practically thriving as Steve.

On the other hand obviously he IS still in a tremendous amount of pain, this is a billion miles from where he would have wanted to be, and half a billion from where he would have wanted to be if he had to accept the first part of this of being made human, as he had been excited and ready to live at the Bunker, even if it was never made clear what his life plan was beyond that. In a way he was only coping so well as to even accept his lot WITHOUT Dean returning to his life, and the Rit Zien is already in town picking people off while he looks for Cas, so his misery about being made human and kicked out is still an unavoidable factor… Like, really, this is just a massive step up from being on the run, since he’s clean and settled in one location and knows where food is coming from and probably gets free coffee :P

When it comes to Cas’s human vs angel conflict, again, he’s accepting being human too soon but this season he swings around in extremes. In 9x03 he talks about how he’s no angel and is in the lowest slump of having just been made human as the world is so cruel to him and he’s had no time to adapt. Here he’s adapting, but it’s still forced on him, and so his acceptance is still heavily laced with regret and, well, the fact it’s acceptance rather than his choice. By the end of the season it’s a mess about what he wants, as he accepts his role leading the army, gives it all up (mostly he just wants to be with his human family, for real, however that may happen >.>) but at the end his parting words of the season are a lamenting wish to just be an angel, although even that is tinged with a sense of it not being that simple for him and a sense of loss of that old self.

(I’m fascinated what season 12 does for him, since I’m not completely opposed to Cas occupying a middle ground and staying an angel – we know from spoilers he’s going to be a bit more BAMF and old school Cas hopefully, and yet he seems now to actually finally have been accepted into his chosen family and his decision is made of where he’d rather be AND that they’d rather have him, taking out some of the conflict that powered this whole arc. Carver era pushed hard Cas’s journey to come to some greater understanding with his potential to be human, but there wasn’t a whole lot of time for it in season 11 aside from a second  “dog that thinks it’s people” repeat, while it was in practically every Cas episode in season 10 except maybe 10x14 from what I can recall off the top of my head, and I think 10x23 just because they deleted the scene where he talks about Claire and his found family etc… Anyway it’ll be interesting if the question is asked next season at all.)

* * *

> NORA  
> Hate to interrupt you guys,

Why though Nora. :P

…

Either she’s being sarcastic about Steve chatting at work and is giving him a horrible task to do specifically to punish him for the long distraction (he got that box out to stock the shelves but he sure hasn’t been doing it :P) or… well, the other time I accidentally sent out a fandom-wise newsletter was joking about Nora assuming Dean was the ex-boyfriend here to distract Cas :P Like, “I can see you have some shit going on here Steve (are you sleeping in my store because he kicked you out after an argument?) but you can sort this out on your own time?” :P And of course she immediately also reminds him that he’s babysitting tonight, in front of Dean. Trying to make Steve’s ex jealous? Just reminding him he’s on her hook and if he’s gonna sleep at the store because his no good asshole ex kicked him out, he’d better earn his keep?

It’s that little frowny-eyebrows-side-glance from Dean.

Liiittle unguarded moment when he’s not looking at Cas and just reacts to this for himself before he slaps on his Bro Face.

mmmm _hmmm >.>_

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> No, Dean. It’s not. Nora – she’s a very nice woman, I’m pretty sure she’s not a reaper intent on killing me … and she’s asked me out. Going on dates – that’s something humans do, right?

“nice” “probably not going to kill you” and “it’s what we’re supposed to do” are excellent A+ reasons to date someone

I mean I’d assume the first 2 are necessary although probably not the ones you’d list first…. :P  

Okay, this isn’t JUST Dean’s fault: Metatron told Cas to find a wife and practically his only advice for How To Human. Cas probably feels like he’s making serious progress on his human checklist. The ridiculousness of this obligation  _genuinely_  stands out in the human!Cas narrative and it’s one of my favourite things about it. Just how pointless and silly the order – the directive from on High by the newly self-appointed God, even – is. This narrative, or life plan, just isn’t *for* Cas and I think this arc does similar to the much much longer Lisa arc for Dean – by the end of it, “live normal” has been taken off his life plan, and it takes until season 11 for “what’s it like to settle down with a hunter” to appear on Dean’s radar, and in the intervening time for him, it’s either nothing, or hook ups, or unresolved romantic tension with his angel. The bait and switch on the babysitting at the very least plants the idea that Cas should question what he really wants, and Dean as a conflicting interest shows up disrupting his life plan.

Like, to ignore the actual plot and look at it from Nora’s eyes is perhaps the best way to understand what this actually does with Cas, just because there’s so much plot nonsense wrapped up in it,  _but_ it’s being played as a jilted lover. Which is why I think the jokes about her seeing them as exes are so important as it’s actually the basic analysis of the emotional subtext from Cas’s POV (made much simpler than Dean’s since he’s got all the Gadreel baggage his end). Dean barges back into Cas’s life, throws off his plans, attempts to reconnect with him, they spend an ambiguous night together and then Cas presumably soon after quits the Gas n Sip, his dissatisfaction with his new life winning out and his need to reconnect with his real story – aka not the “find a wife” story that Metatron wanted to push on him.

* * *

Cas is really bad at following the story he’s supposed to :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> And you’re a hunter in training, remember?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Yeah, I remember. You said I sucked.

Never mind re: “I am busy” – THIS is Cas’s bitchiest line :P

* * *

The whole exchange is both super important and the wider implications are one of the talked-to-death things I’m trying to avoid if I can’t elaborate on them very intelligently, but I do like this:

> DEAN  
> I didn’t say that. I said that there was, uh, uh, you know, “room for improvement.” Come on.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> All right, 

Dean clarifies/revokes his insult (offered teasingly, taken personally. Again, 8x08 lurks under the skin of this episode, from the repetition of the emotional themes to little call backs like this) and immediately the air clears and Cas is willing to come with Dean. I wouldn’t say Dean’s forgiven for kicking him out but Cas feels able to work with him after he says this and I think just because Dean showed a willingness to be flexible on his opinions, and to act kindly and considerately to Cas in his own way. Like, Cas might be pissed but he loves Dean to the ends of the Earth, so theirs is the relationship where token gestures in a fight can be taken as deeply meant.

Dean also says he never apologises properly/says sorry when he doesn’t mean it, in 11x22, Berens again, and  _this_  sort of half-apology where Dean doesn’t actually  _need_  to say the words but the meaning is evident anyway are much more his style, and I don’t think it’s at all a character insult for him to be flippant about saying sorry when we do know when he ACTUALLY wants to apologise, in his own emotionally stunted way he does, AND is understood by those who love him.

* * *

Then they go actually investigate some stuff, 17 minutes into the episode!!

(Okay, Dean already went to a crime scene early on but shhh this is not a critique of the pacing, this episode is perfect, I’m just laughing at how long he was bothering Cas at the Gas n Sip :P)

Also Dean’s look when he realises that Cas has wandered off, and he’s immediately concerned about him. It’s not like he seems surprised when he sees Cas leaning on the Impala looking like he’s recovering from his panic attack

(*hugs Cas*)

Dean should probably hug him too. We’re at that bit where they’re in ridiculous physical proximity to each other.

The way Dean sits in the car with Cas with his arm on the back of the seat and his hand resting between them is the single most frustrating thing in this entire episode (except for the deleted scene that is the entire 10 hours of the fan fiction gap, of course :P)

  


(2nd pic just a muggle photo and I’m getting lazy so don’t wait for it to animate… :P)

His hand is just, like… resting there… between them… not touching Cas… I think this was where this episode got me, tbh… Somewhere between here and 9x18 in my marathon of this show that finally turned me to fandom, I saw SOMETHING that made me absolutely certain Destiel was the “subtext” Metatron was talking about…. Like, considering how Cas was so messed up it feels like they should be touching and Dean offering him that comfort of at  _least_  a shoulder touch, but his hand is just resting uselessly between them and it feels ridiculously intimate. Like, they  _would_  be touching  _if only_. It’s sort of a futile gesture that sums up Dean’s entire approach to Cas this episode – he CAN’T reach out to him, and make it right, because he’s the one who kicked Cas out and put him here in the first place, but he WANTS to, but he just hovers indecisively in the middle and in the end doesn’t tell Cas about “Zeke” when he really should. But at the same time, reaching  _almost_  into Cas’s space feels sort of possessive but not in an aggressive way… I dunno, just an expression of their closeness? They sit in the car to have this chat but it’s not moving, so the bench seat doubles up as a sofa, and despite the windows being open and everyone still milling around the crime scene visible in the background, they’ve gone to a “private place” to talk (I think the onlookers sort of emphasise this – showing Dean and Cas closing themselves off from the world to talk) and of course the way the Impala is used to make that safe space… For Dean it’s practically the same as taking someone back to him room for some more personal time.

… Anyway that is an incomplete list of ways this little exchange completely fucks me up, when it comes to the staging of it >.>

* * *

I think the best part of this episode is just that Cas gets to talk about his experiences so often. Like even just at the Gas n Sip with Dean he got to express how he was feeling, and now he gets to infodump about the Rit Zien and talk about how HE relates to everything…

> CASTIEL  
> But he just got here. The ebb and flow of human emotion – Dean, I’ve been on earth for a few years, and I’ve only begun to grasp it. To him, pain is pain.

He says that the ones who get smited are “past saving” which I think is an important thematic thing even if the point here is that it’s untrue and from the cold open guy onwards we know that they are able to be saved – he had already made the choice not to die.

I say that because 11x01 (which I dropped by recently to watch something or other) starts with the line from 10x07 (Berens) of Dean saying “Truth is, I’m past saving” as the introduction to the whole of season 11, before anything else happens. I’ve mentioned pretty much each season so far in this rewatch how the recap starts and the significance of the chosen line, but anywho I guess this saves me the effort if I make it to season 11 :P Anyway obviously I opened this rewatch talking about the cold open guy being by the end of things a direct parallel to Dean, most notably in 10x23. So again this episode is using key phrases which aren’t just important to the arc but in the end are actually critical to recapping it by the show’s standards. This episode by itself is of course is more a validation for Cas’s feelings about himself, giving him a reason to say he wants to live and to fight back against what is essentially a walking metaphor for suicide (as he explains it, basically assisted suicide on the battlefield) but it carries an essential message, by focusing on the emotional pain and saying it’s never so bad as to be past saving. And then season 11 also having the same message, with Dean resisting Amara’s call and finding another way to a surprisingly peaceful, happy resolution.

* * *

> DEAN  
> All right, well, we got to stop him.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> You have to stop him.
> 
> DEAN  
> You’re scared.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> It’s different now, Dean. Everything feels different.

Remember in season 7 when Osiris was the MotW and Bobby was like “get Dean the fuck out of town” (while Dean was off being kidnapped) … I THINK Dean kind of recognises this here, but doesn’t put it together that Cas is in THAT much distress that he’s the target, just that Cas should stay away because it’s dangerous and he COULD be a target if they come into close contact with the Rit Zien on the hunt. I think it’s actually Dean having a hard time conceptualising Cas as scared or emotionally vulnerable. It’s sort of a learning curve for Dean, and again, like back at the Gas n Sip, it seemed to take him a few runs at the idea to really understand Cas was genuinely desperate enough to work at a Gas n Sip rather than hiding out there with other options open to him. In the immediate aftermath of the fight he looks horrified.

* * *

> DEAN  
> You stay safe. Go on that date, all right? Go live a normal life.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Okay.

Pfft *crams the “live normal” meta I already linked into everyone’s faces again*

Just so we’re clear, the options here are “date women and live a normal life” and “hunt with Dean” :P

But yeah I think again it’s more like this choice is being projected onto Cas – Nora was presented as a minor conflict of interests just to get Cas out of the door and working the case, by Dean’s interpretation, and now he’s offering her as the alternative to hanging out working the case with him. HE sees Cas having a crack at the whole thing Dean had to reject and write off as an option by the end of the Lisa arc… I think for Cas his personal rejection of this by the end of the episode, where we know he ends up leaving the Gas n Sip, is a rejection of the mundane human life, basically, in one episode, doing Dean’s entire Lisa arc with Nora (and baby Tanya as Ben? :P) – Cas is always following on Dean’s heels with his arcs but I never thought of it like this before, that he’s ticking off such major plot arcs as Lisa and Ben. Hm.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I need a ride.
> 
> DEAN nods, and smiles.
> 
> DEAN  
> Right.

Aargh Dean’s smile when he realises he has to drive Cas. ANOTHER moment of the sad look followed by his putting on a smile… A rather flirty one. Shh. :P

* * *

> KEVIN  
> Seriously? You want to let Crowley communicate with Abaddon? A king and a power-mad knight of hell isn’t enough for you? You want to throw a demonic team-up into the mix?

*stares at 10x01*

Okay so demon!Dean was more power ballad mad but you know, whatever. 

it counts as foreshadowing

* * *

> SAM  
> I don’t think so. I mean, I – I don’t trust Crowley, either. But I can’t honestly see him working with Abaddon. He hates her too much.
> 
> KEVIN  
> You said it. You can’t trust him.
> 
> SAM  
> We don’t have to

Sam has different personal terms and conditions for trusting Crowley than Dean does. Dean takes it on faith that Crowley genuinely hates Abaddon that much and that it’s safe to team up with him (whoops) but Sam, who saw first hand Abaddon beating the crap out of Crowley, is hesitant to trust.

* * *

… I don’t have a whole lot to say about these scenes where Crowley sees the spell because it’s been hauled over so many times. And since the angel fall spell continues to not really come back around (yet…. She says… waiting………) this episode ends up being pretty face value on this at least: Crowley may not be trusted but nothing main text has ever contradicted this moment. 10x18 where Cas got his grace back has our 3rd and final cupid of Carver era (yeah the cupid in this episode is canon now, I guess. Hey it’s my interpretation of canon and I can do with it what I want >.>) and so this friggin’ interpretation of the 3rd ingredient being love (askljhssgjgsdsdfgjh 10x23 I’m looking at you) hovers juuuust out of reach, like, fingertips brushing it, but watching it always stay just safely out of grasp. Like, not even the sense of other stuff being canon which is more like one of those grabby claws in the funfair picking something up and then dropping it again…

* * *

Anyway thinking of that, while I’ve been typing, Dean’s pulled up outside Nora’s house with Cas.

You know, Day and Night are a real gamble around here. :P I’m assuming this is why Berens tried to murder the sun in 11x22

* * *

Cas looks so scared of Nora’s house

* * *

“Cas. Wait…………”

You know, if this season didn’t include “he’s in love…….” this would definitely be the most irritating pause of the season. :P The way he says “Cas” it’s just so… I don’t know, vulnerable? Weird? Urgent?? It doesn’t sound like someone who’s going to just critique Cas’s fashion choices and at my most generous I’d allow this to be Dean just wanting to apologise for the whole kicking Cas out of the Bunker thing before he hypothetically never sees him again, although I think we all know Dean would have stuck around to say goodbye after solving the case if it HADN’T involved Cas again. But anyway the “I can’t let you do this” even if it seems to flow into “you’re going to wear that” is one of those lines that answers the question with the emotionally true answer before it moves on into the false one (“… with humanity!”) if only to just answer it with  _he doesn’t want to let Cas do it_  and that’s why he says it.

whether it’s Cas’s still pissed off with Dean over the whole “jilted lover” thing “What?” (not his most bitchy line of the episode, but… I’d still say it earns a place on the rankings even if I’m putting it 3rdso far :P) or just his own internal monologue warning him not to, Dean bottles out of asking Cas not to go on the date – and yes this trope is the trope no matter if it’s played through to the point of the character actually saying anything or not… Anyway, again, Dean’s shame and guilt about what he’s done to Cas comes to play – he has no place to tell Cas what to do. And once he’s certain he HAS to let Cas go on the date and finally in that pause knows he’s blown his chance, the fact he was quietly letting Cas go wearing the vest, perversely sabotaging the romance without saying a thing, also has to be addressed, since he’s made the choice to let Cas go through with it (honestly this is some rom com level “learn not to meddle in other people’s lives” crap like Jane Austen’s Emma or whatever, but the message applies back to all the horrific consent violations to do with Gadreel so you know, however you wanna teach a lesson….. :P)

* * *

This may be the worst episode ever made but at least it includes a solid 10 seconds of Dean canonically eyeing Cas up for the greater good

* * *

Also because he made Cas take off his vest that is now left behind in the Impala so Dean has a guaranteed 100% authentic reason to see Cas again before he leaves town.

Well played, sir.

* * *

It’s still super tacky to cut a flower from someone’s own garden to give to them, I’m sorry Cas.

* * *

Dean totally could have reversed away from the truck, you know.

I suppose it’s not “cool” to show the Impala parallel parking

* * *

> NORA  
> My date! Bowling, would you believe it? But damned if I’m not dressing fancy, even for bowling.

Filed under: stuff that repeats later in the season - Metatron being dragged bowling later in the season for diplomacy with another angel…. But the date turns out to be a bust. Since Metatron had one of his angel bombers show up at the bowling alley I’d assume he always meant for it to BE a bust, and that is the “final draft” of Metatron’s plan… Just casually throwing in my “Metatron sees all” theory here… Although tbh I have no idea what he gets out of this episode, except perhaps obviously he represents “find a wife” and this has just been thoroughly debunked by the fact Nora isn’t interested in dating Cas… Considering the idea Metatron keeps scrapping and re-drafting, I’m very amused to think he fell for the unpredictability of his characters here :P

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Not yours. His.
> 
> SAM  
> What difference does it make?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> I’ve had yours. Stuck in here, you can’t fault me for wanting a little variety.

… Huh I did have that theory that Sam was (accidentally?) manipulating Crowley through his connection of Crowley having his blood.

Also this is totally phrased like Crowley is going to use it rather than how it’s ostensibly just being used for communication and no one’s supposed to be ingesting it

(obviously this is avoiding Crowley interacting with Gadreel)

* * *

> KEVIN  
> No, I just have a policy of not giving blood to anyone who’s murdered my mother.

Oh huh also Berens writes the episode where they find out she ISN’T dead

(he clearly loves clearing up after Buckleming :P)

* * *

> SAM  
> What? What happened?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> I’ve been placed on hold.

Mostly just amused to track so many threads through the show from a first episode because Berens seems to really dig Crowley and he’s one of the writers more responsible for the dorky but consistent stuff about Hell turning on Crowley leading to that walk out in 11x22

* * *

Fortunately others have written so much about Cas singing that song I don’t have to because I don’t get the reference (well I mean I’ve read the meta :P) and this is horrifically laden with secondhand embarrassment

* * *

> CASTIEL (to the baby)  
> Nobody told you. Nobody explained. You’re just … shoved out kicking and screaming into this human life, without any idea why any of it feels the way it feels, or why this confusion, which feels like it’s … a hair’s breadth from terror or pain. You know, just when you think you do understand, it’ll turn out you’re wrong. You didn’t understand anything at all. Guess that’s just how it is when you’re new at this. You know, it wasn’t that long ago when all I’d need to do to ease your pain was touch you.

LET CAS MONOLOGUE MORE 2K16

Also let Cas heal more babies because I feel so bad for him here not being able to do it… And it’s not big talk, he genuinely goes around healing babies when he can

The fact Cas relates so strongly to a baby is just so painful though >.> He’s only a few weeks old himself, he feels. He said how long he’d been on earth earlier and how he understands better than the Rit Zien but this shows just how much that’s only in comparison to himself vs other humans.

I hate to be shippy at a time like this but the main text does at least appear to be talking about his misunderstanding over the date… The fact he’s talking about misunderstanding situations so soon after he asked for a clarification on Dean’s behaviour after the “I can’t let you do this” followed by the immediate reveal of a romantic false lead…

… well I mean, a romantic false lead implies there’s someone else right out there. :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> Never mind. Let’s see. Is that his truck?
> 
> SHERIFF  
> Yep.
> 
> DEAN  
> Cas … 

You know it has been years and this episode can still fuck me up. I forget 1 single line of dialogue occurred and I’m back to an emotional jelly… In this case the panicked way Dean says “Cas…” as he realises

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> It’s a fever, Ephraim. It will pass.
> 
> ANGEL (EPHRAIM)  
> You remember my name? I was just a nobody when we met, but you – you were a legend

Cas knows all the angels :’) He’s such a good egg. Also it’s a real character trait that he always seems to know them, I don’t think anyone’s ever called it out before, but this changes things to prove that Cas is just really good at names and caring to remember them – necessary, I think, for introducing so much of the ousted angel secretarial pool like Hannah or I think he doesn’t know Muriel by sight among others, basically because they either had to commit to giving him a whole backstory with every angel he ever met or go the route of confirming all angels know all other angels by default… probably not a hard thing to do but where do you ever find a way to explain it? :P

* * *

Also, Cas getting to be genuinely physically intimidating when he thinks he’s protecting the baby. What could he have really done about Ephraim at this point I have no idea, but Misha is taller than this bloke so Cas gets to tower over him and snarl and I’m happy

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> How’d you find me?
> 
> EPHRAIM  
> Because you’re warded? The same way I find all my patients – I just followed the sound of your pain. You have no idea how loud it is. I could hear you for miles.

I do think it’s beautiful that Cas is eventually painted in practically direct contrast to this by the longing retcon (I know the retcon technically applies to all angels but it’s mostly used for Cas)… it’s a similar question, asking how angelic GPS works, but Cas is linked to following more positive emotions, to help and to hopefully create positive change by answering prayers, while of course this guy is sort of an angel of death.

* * *

> EPHRAIM  
> Is that what you think you’re doing, Castiel – the best you can? Well, I’m sorry. But if this is the best that the famed Castiel can do, you’re a more urgent case than I thought. I used to admire you. You failed more often than you succeeded. But at least you played big.
> 
> EPHRAIM  
> Now what are you doing? Burying your head in the sand. Right when your kind needs you the most.

I am assuming Metatron’s typewriter is clacking away in the background. 9x18 again forces Cas to action, when it’s OBVIOUS he’s doing it, but all of Cas’s interactions with angels from this point on force him again and again. Cas loses out on the “find a wife” story and the next thing that happens is this guy shows up spouting such dialogue? Metatron’s on Draft 2 (I feel like I should count how many he goes through before we get to  the final draft… I’m pretty sure there’s like 3 drafts in 9x09 alone :P)

Also noting the “burying your head in the sand” as it’s a fairly relevant Cas-related line, going as far as 11x06/18 though of course with a lot more nuance than him JUST doing that in all cases. (and of course going back to 8x08, the forerunner of Cas’s TV thing, which I’ve mentioned many times this rewatch >.>)

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> You’re taking souls before their time. Voiding my contracts!
> 
> ABADDON  
> That’s right. I’m taking it all down, brick by brick. It’s over. The days of Crowley, the king of bureaucrats – are done.

I almost feel like he was affectionate calling Naomi a bureaucrat in 8x19

Anyway, more painting Crowley as the best worst option – that thread goes back as far as season 7 where they needed to build him up again as at least somewhat okay to ally themselves with, so stuff like the Becky episode in particular showed him as at least having integrity and adherence to the natural order. Order vs chaos, really… And that’s basically where he failed with demon!Dean too :P

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> I want to live.
> 
> EPHRAIM  
> But as what, Castiel? As an angel? or a man?

*rends shirt and screams*

Oh well the show is functionally immortal, we’ll probably get back to this arc one year or another

For now, anyway, Cas makes the important choice just to live – Ephraim may not see a distinction here, but Cas is challenged and gets the chance to say for himself that life is better than the alternative no matter what happens in it. Ephraim however identifies Cas’s main source of pain and challenges him over it to press the point, to prove to Cas he’s messed up to such a degree it would be kinder to kill him… This all (most of the episode included) seems to tell us that Cas is most messed up about being human and would want to be an angel again, and there’s a huge amount of truth to that especially while he’s hurting and helpless and of course on this arc where he’s been exiled and can’t live the human existence he’d WANT to have… And to underline exactly how the question gets confused, Dean barges in through the door the moment it’s asked, and stops Cas from answering it with the distraction, pulling him away from giving any easy answer voice and giving it the same power as the simple “I want to live”

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Bring me the translations. I keep my agreements.

Thanks, Abaddon :P I think she provides a powerful motivation to genuinely not screw them over… completely :P I notice Crowley does not flip to the second page of the translation he’s offered

*grinds teeth*

Lizzy vs the angel fall spell, the saga

> CROWLEY reads  
> “Obtain the ingredients – heart, bow, Grace.” Blah, blah, blah. “Mix until the smoke shall rise from the ashes casting the angels from heaven.” Blah, blah – Oh. Hm. It’s irreversible.

I want to know what was in those blah’s.

I think a very deliberate showing that we’re not getting all the information and that there’s more under the surface of what we’re told. E.g. the actual info is the maintext, the “blah”s the subtext

which applies widely

* * *

Lol cut to Dean with his pink n blue hangy storage things because why not.

Listen there are a lot of red n blue conflict colour things going on in this episode (Abaddon outside Castle Storage, which has all its own weight of symbolism, from John Winchester associations back in Bad Day At Black Rock to 5x01 and Lucifer and so on)

But when Dean is placed next to blue and pink… yeah there’s a double meaning to read there. :P These things have also barely featured until he crashes into them.

* * *

> EPHRAIM  
> You say you want to live. But you can’t see what I see. By choosing a human life, you’ve already given up. You … chose … death.

Oh my god, “see what I see” in season 9? About a character choosing to die as a human? I quit. :P

(okay no I don’t. This is great. The will to live or die is such a strong theme in Carver era. This episode is casually feeding like,  _every_  season finale henceforth, including this season’s, with eerily resonant lines and scenarios. Most of it about Dean – but said about Cas or his narrative mirrors from this episode. Dean’s will to live or die is basically his emotional subplot for the rest of the season from 9x11 onwards (takes the Mark practically as a death wish recklessly, and ends up cursed to NEVER die) and there’s the whole thing about him being functionally immortal so long as he has the Mark, and then once it’s gone, Amara hovers over him promising oblivion if they would join together… And then there’s the whole Dean “humanity” Winchester side of things,  since he’s twice filled with random humanity at crisis moments (the blood in 10x03, the human souls in 11x23) which end up being HUGE not giving up moments. Humanity is associated with strength and will to live and to overcome insurmountable odds and reject defeat and oblivion, and so Ephraim/Metatron is completely wrong about this)

Also, Ephraim implies Cas has chosen human life over angel. YES because he has no alternative right now, but hearing it spoken like that sort of puts down a more solid case for Cas choosing human just as the previous dialogue implied he’d rather be an angel, just to keep it ambiguous and open which way he’d go…

… also reminds me of LotR and Arwen being like “I choose a mortal life” to be with Aragorn but shhhh

(Also: what team is he playing for? Asked at the beginning of the episode.)

* * *

Dean and Cas tag-team Ephraim’s death, which I always love – Dean provides the weapon, Cas does the deed. Mmm teamwork.

* * *

Look, I know there’s some controversy about episode order, but this last phone call with Sam this episode is HAUNTING me and more than anything makes me wonder if 9x06 should have been 9x08, right before things kicked off. 

He’s filmed entirely from behind as he delivers the bad news – 

that shot MIGHT be just for the fact Sam is delivering bad news, and to emphasise the grim feeling or whatever, but it also casts Sam in deep isolation, and then the close up shots keep him faceless and shadowed. 

Dean has basically talked to him as if he’s Gadreel all episode to keep him and Cas separate, and the blurring between Gadreel and Sam gets pretty scary towards the end… And again, my weird feeling about Sam being kept in the Bunker (this time with Kevin) vs what Gadreel does to keep him quiet in his own head. The shot of Sam alone in the Bunker has a lot going on.

* * *

Also:

> SAM  
> Are you gonna tell Cas?
> 
> DEAN looks back towards NORA’s house.

[…]

> DEAN sees CASTIEL approaching.
> 
> DEAN (to SAM)  
> I got to go.

We don’t know what Dean said and we have no evidence he told Sam he was even seeing Cas at all or if he hums and haws about it and makes it sound like he might drop by to say hi on the way out of town or just tells him he’s going to come straight back. You could ASSUME from Sam asking this that he knows Dean and Cas are working together, but it seems likely that Dean never told him, and that’s conspicuously left blank for us by cutting the conversation and omitting Dean’s answer about what he’d tell Cas. The fact Dean hangs up on Sam suggests he doesn’t want to let Sam know he’s around Cas in the first place.

* * *

“Where to, Cas?” … Aaah that exchange will always hurt. Cas has nowhere and it’s Dean’s fault and they both know it. Further on the subject of things unsaid, Cas just gives Dean a wounded look and gets in the car, and then Dean leans on the car and has a private wounded look for himself.

gosh he loves Cas so much and it’s killing him

* * *

Amazingly there is STILL stuff happening in this episode as we have a minute to establish Crowley stole the blood (shocker) and is clearly now supposed to be addicted to it. Mostly just commenting in bleary 5am awe at how much is in this episode :P

* * *

Thinking of.

Dean’s apologising to Cas. An apology that can be only half-meant without telling Cas why or letting him come back, and giving him advice to stay away and stay out of the story (for Cas’s own protection and peace of mind).

> CASTIEL  
> Thank you, Dean. (Sighs) But there’s something Ephraim said. The angels — they need help. Can I really sit this out? Shouldn’t I be searching for a way to get them home?

And there’s Cas’s guilt again >.> The same one that Metatron got the better of in 8x22/23… now doubled up for FURTHER breaking Heaven

Honestly at this point I have no idea how that can be truly fixed other than Cas learning to let go >.> Which at least was the theme at the end of 11 for Dean and he seems to be many steps ahead of the rest of TFW having been through all this character development so we can hope it’s the end goal for Sam and Cas.

Anyway Dean telling Cas he’s “human now” and it’s “not his problem” once again emphasises, weirdly, that being an angel is NOT where Cas wants to go, via the route of this speech making it really clear that Dean is wrong, and that Cas DOES feel obligated – duty over desire – to help the angels and do what he can for them for their sake and his own guilt. Using that as his conflict as a burden he’s carrying that I think was first voiced in season 6 of “much of the time I’d rather be here” only now it’s in the language of “human or angel”

Just that in the immediate moment, Dean is rejecting the “here” as he doubles down on Cas’s exile. So there is nowhere Cas can be that he’d  _want_  to be.

* * *

> TV NEWS ANNOUNCER  
>  _It’s been weeks since the massive meteor storm, yet Idaho Falls astronomers still have unanswered questions. NASA and Washington are both continuing to study the phenomenon._

CASTIEL switches off the TV and goes to look out the window, moodily.

He’s so not ready to live that normal life despite his attempt to recreate the routine from the opening >.> In a way this is good just for pushing him back into the game, but in one day Dean effectively stripped his entire precarious human safe space from him :P In this case he breaks routine and outs the TV on, which we didn’t see before, and Cas and TV is always a thing. In this case, it gives Cas one more reminder, a sort of final straw moment, of the angel fall, and he know he can’t stay where he is any longer.

Bonus: pining.

Wait. I mean

Pining.

The trees are following Cas >.>


	7. 9x07

Or: I love this kid but I find Dean’s eyebrow continuity honestly a mess. 

* * *

The most surreal part of this is especially since I’m simultaneously down in season 2 right now with my Mum Watch of the show, that this episode could pretty much be a season 2 or 3 episode save for the age of the (main) actors, dropping in literally anywhere after John dies. The recap starts with the exact same stuff all the season 1 and 2 episodes did when there was basically nothing TO recap aside from John dumping baby Sam into toddler Dean’s arms and telling him to get outside as fast as he can, and then recaps 1x18 and the Christmas episode, before getting to recent plot stuff.

It’s extremely heavy-handed on the codependency on Dean’s side stuff of “look out for Sammy” repeating the line from 3 different places before moving to showing us the Gadreel decision plus bonus “Don’t you dare think that there is anything that I would put in front of you!” aka look where that message being drilled into his head got you (I’m amazed there wasn’t a throwback to Dream A Little Dream to make it more obvious >.>)

And it shows us the “story became the story” theme has been around since season 1 with the lines from Something Wicked, 

> SAM  
> What else do you remember?
> 
> DEAN  
> Nothing. I was a kid, all right?

showing that this is really just dragging back up for attention stuff which is deeply rooted in the show.

…

I really like Adam Glass’s episodes when it comes to stuff like this and I think this may be his best one by far

* * *

The Chitters has messed me up because the first thing I think when looking at the cold open kids is one is wearing plaid and now I just want to go watch 11x19 again.

The other kid is wearing a red hoodie with white strings for the hood. Aka, Cas, since he was last seen wearing the hoodie of family (I think?? Charlie had it in 8x20, right? Then Kevin, now Cas? They all wear it in such short succession :P Either way they’re all characters in a specific vulnerable situation). I think these cold open kids are the bully characters though, and Tiny Tim is aligned kind of with both Winchesters through later stuff in the barn, but mostly with Dean for interactions. Makes me wonder considering we’re in the part of the show where Dean has taken on a huge burden of responsibility for Sam and Cas’s lives, e.g. dictating if Cas stays or goes, obviously the whole thing with Sam and Gadreel… kind of representing them in a subconsciously thought way as Dean as the scared kid chasing after them for whatever reason, obviously looking much smaller and weaker, and flipping it around to show his helplessness there - he HAS to save them and bring them back to life and give over his life to them etc etc etc because of, well, all the examples of the way he was raised in this episode and the critique of John’s parenting in it, culminating in him giving up this little slice of halfway normal life to go back to hunting to look after Sam. (And of course Cas’s sly presence in this episode as Robin at “Cus’s place” - just as Sam is slipping through his fingers with the Gadreel thing as the last part of the recap reminded us, Dean has already had to give up Cas, and Robin as the past lost love reflects Cas’s current status too)

* * *

> MAN (continues)  
> You got till the count of 10, and you’d better come out or the belt’s coming off! 

Although Sonny’s is kind of painted in fandom response as this magical respite from everything like Dean went on a spa trip (… I mean compared to hunting monsters, probably?) but this is a exactly the sort of parenting people assume about John, so although we can remove some factors from Dean’s upbringing trauma (he’s settled, thriving at school, and not hunting monsters), from the start Sonny’s is at least shown as somewhere with fairly harsh parenting for the boys. Of course Dean seemed like a total goodie two shoes while he was there, and is also older and therefore less vulnerable at the time than any of these boys (and on the wrestling team :P), so who knows.

* * *

For the first time we have an episode opening on Sam alone in the Bunker and the emphasis on HIS isolation (9x04 started with him alone but there was no real emphasis on that) after this imagery has been used for Dean a few times. I mean, also this is how Sam ended last episode:

but this is considerably less ominous, with him just wandering around the main living area calling out for anyone to see where they are, before he gets distracted and nearly reads a book. (shock horror Sam reads books?) On the other hand the theme of them all being isolated from each other by the lies and subterfuge of this part of the season makes a lot of sense, and once again I’m freaked out by Sam alone in the Bunker because of where Gadreel puts him as his happy place: this sort of isolation in the here and now is Dean also keeping Sam ignorant of what’s up with him, leaving him to run around the Bunker - but they’re not looking for a case, and Sam’s quite clearly off-duty here. (I mean I assume they take time off, but just the fact he’s caught doing nothing…

It’s also Oz stuff again, with that “escape into fiction” theme so in a very dark way that’s what’s happening to him

* * *

Dean wearing that weird yellow-ish brown colour that was such a poor omen for him towards the end of the season. 

* * *

he was clearly waiting for a call or something because he comes haring into the room chasing a buzzing phone he couldn’t possibly have heard and stops Sam from hanging up on Sonny - he clearly had to be waiting for this, especially if he’s not at all surprised to hear from Sonny. I’d guess he’s already been in contact once, and Dean is sort of already half-ready to go. 

He is also perfectly fine telling Sam the truth, now that they’re both adults, although of course there’s a fair amount he holds back and Sam either discovers for himself or never REALLY hears this episode. Like, it WAS a story they’d kept Sam out of the loop on for way too long… I remember some serious parallels made between this and 10x09 with that story Sam thought he knew that Dean had a kind of un-censored version of he was happy to share when prompted, but Sam had never been given the full version of before either. It’s almost more about the prompting to share these days?

(of course, more to the theme of him treating Sam like a child over this stretch - not telling him about Sonny’s was a joint Dean and John deception - idk why John never told Sam in the first place  but it ended up being a thing that was kept from him. And this parallels the Gadreel decision, with him and Dean similarly placed, with Gadreel as John, arbitrarily deciding Sam isn’t supposed to know something, and Dean emotionally blackmailed to go along with it.)

> SAM  
> Hey, Dean … I mean, why didn’t you just tell me you went to a boys’ home?
> 
> DEAN  
> I don’t know. Uh, it was Dad’s idea. And then it just – you know, the story became the story. I was 16.

* * *

> DEAN (continues)  
> So… Hey – you gonna be cool to do this, or are you too tired?
> 
> SAM  
> Uh, no. Yeah, I’m just, uh … I’ll be fine.
> 
> DEAN  
> And  _everybody’s_  okay with … heading out to the Catskills?
> 
> SAM (looking bemused)  
> I am everybody.

Dean……..

Anyway I guess that’s blatant textual juxtaposing of the lies Sam gets told :P

* * *

Sonny’s is sort of stylistically a larger version of Cain’s house. And of course all the grungy farm imagery of this stretch of Carver era is heavily present this episode what with it being mostly set ON a farm

* * *

> SAM  
> You were 16. You made a mistake.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah.  _I_  made the mistake. (getting out of the car.) Look, I know how you think. None of this was Dad’s fault.

Dean trying to shoot down me and Sam telling him that John bloody well is to blame here and Dean was 16 and bullshit notions of him being a man since whenever John first let him shoot cans or drive the car or whatever aside, he was way too young to be responsible for himself like that, NEVER MIND Sam. AS DEMONSTRATED BY HOW HE ENDED UP AT SONNY’S IN THE FIRST PLACE

…  idk why I’m yelling, I know Glass agrees with me :P brb making sure my john winchester tag is on this post

* * *

> DEAN  
> I’m Dean. This is my brother, Sam. We’re old buddies of Sonny’s.
> 
> RUTH  
> Prison buddies?
> 
> DEAN swallows, taken aback; SAM coughs.
> 
> DEAN  
> No. Uh … you mind telling him that we’re here?

*squints at that stage direction* Can’t tell if that’s Dean being awkward about Sam first hearing anything about Sonny personally (pfft talk about your experiences in the car on that long drive you had to do) and it’s his prison thing, or… Dean being weird about the word Buddy. Since we’re only 2 episodes since that thing in 9x05 about hunting buddies where Dean got super weird about the word. 

Like, no, we’re not ~buddies~ from his prison days 

Honestly such a subtle mistaken for gay cue I’m for once not even sure how aware anyone was of it, except that it was put in here to be played as awkward and Dean has an established weirdness about the word from close by in canon.

* * *

Plus, like. 

the whole thing with him always calling Cas “buddy” for which the fandom mercilessly mocks him :P

* * *

> DEPUTY BILLY  
> Well, his old man called. Once he found out what happened, he said let him rot in jail. Judge is off on a fishing trip. Boy’s too young to leave in County. So we thought it best he stay here till arraignment. 

**TOO YOUNG**

I should stop yelling.

Judge being off on a fishing trip is weirdly mirroring John being absent just in the way a major authority figure is off on a hunting-y sort of thing leaving subordinates to make decisions for him, basically mirroring how there’s no higher authority to appeal to.

(I think it’s a pretty big bummer Glass didn’t stick it out for season 11 just because writing God as the ultimate John Winchester parallel would have probably been really satisfying for him to have a crack at. In any case the parallel is still here to be made as well, on all the different levels)

* * *

Is that Bobby’s fireplace being repurposed? Even if it’s not it has the green tile so it’s evocative of it. 

I’m a little scared of how Dean has literally been wearing his shirts the same for however many years this is because this is the season he spends a good chunk of it wearing his cuffs rolled up like that. 

Probably won’t catch him alive in shoes like that any more though.

The major visual difference we’re given between past and present is the blanket on the back of the sofa appearing when Dean flashbacks. I feel like my tag for this episode may have meta on that already… 

… okay no. At a guess, since it’s being used to distinguish between past and present, it makes the past more home-y and comfortable (it’s similar orange and whites to the “Cas” rug which I am actually surprised ISN’T in this room), so adds to the nostalgia. It’s in the background in other scenes like with Dean and Robin later. So seeing it gone in the present is also taking away a layer of comfort from the past kind of literally - that way coming back to an old place you were happy in, it always seems colder and smaller and darker than you remembered it to be, as it’s got a sort of golden haze in your memory. It’s also lifting a cover off of the past, so goes with the already established theme of approaching it with more truth than before or seeing it with different eyes 

which I think is kind of important on Dean’s side since in the opening I made it sound a lot like he’s all “oh yeah that’s how it was” to Sam, but he has his whole emotional journey revisiting this place even if he SEEMS cheerful and upfront about it in the opening scene.

* * *

final note: the deputy is wearing sunglasses… indoors… Guess we know why Dean so strongly associates it with douchebags. :P

(I am very amused at the synergy with 9x05 this episode has.)

* * *

okay whoever did this [superwiki transcript](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supernaturalwiki.com%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3D9.07_Bad_Boys_%28transcript%29&t=ZTE4NTAxMmQ2OWFiM2RjYzNkMWNiYjdhOTdhYzk2MTgzMDU4MGI1Nyx5UnNsMWt0NA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F148015532758%2F9x07-rewatch-or-i-love-this-kid-but-i-find-deans&m=1) is actually fascinating me half as much as the episode… I normally delete the stage directions but:

> Sitting in front of YOUNG DEAN, SONNY takes his cuffed hands to open up the cuffs. YOUNG DEAN’s forearms are bruised and red, as if bruised or abraded by bindings or ligature marks.
> 
> SONNY (noting the marks with concern)  
> Deputy do that? (YOUNG DEAN scoffs and shakes his head.) What, your old man? (YOUNG DEAN shakes his head no.) Well, then, how’d you get it?
> 
> YOUNG DEAN (turning back to SONNY, somewhat defiantly)  
> Werewolf.
> 
> SONNY looks at YOUNG DEAN for a long moment, realizing he’s not going to get a different answer from the kid.
> 
> SONNY  
> Okay.

There’s a whole ton of discussion on this moment already out there - the “did John hurt his kids physically” argument is long and old and no stone left unturned etc (well, I have found relatively un-turned stones on this rewatch but shh) but I’m amused by the way the transcript takes pains to describe how the marks look, suggesting specifically that Dean was tied up e.g. making it much more likely this was something that happened on the job.

The actual dialogue is an interesting example of the season 9 storytelling theme - and of course “the story became the story” coming from this episode we know it’s hard at work. In this case though I’m looking ahead to 9x18 and Metatron asking what makes the story work and citing subtext. This moment is intentionally given as an ambiguous moment. Sonny thinks Dean was hurt by John (or the deputy) and has no reason to believe “werewolf” because that’s blatant fiction because to him monsters aren’t real. Dean is being this much snarky and deflective enough that even for us, knowing damn well that werewolves exist in their universe and that Dean was already hunting them at this tender age, Sonny’s speculation on it changes the flippant rely and can offer a crack through which to wonder for ourselves how else Dean might have got the marks, and just to weigh the possibility. 

And then of course from there you can make your opinion whichever way takes your fancy, like writing stage directions to imply it was the monster, or assuming at the very least having Sonny suggest it might be a call to think about how John treated them, in an episode that’s already repeatedly underlined his emotional neglect/harsh emotional punishment to Dean - if not to assume he did hurt him, then to take it as a prompt to consider it emotional abuse being depicted in the episode. And then some John fans will take Dean’s line as total exoneration of John from ever hurting Dean, and probably go with all his surface level comments telling Sam not to get all weird about John and Dean saying that he deserved it…

* * *

> SONNY  
> Oh, please, man. It’s barely standing. Only got a handful of kids working around here now.
> 
> DEAN  
> Why’s that?
> 
> SONNY  
> Because these days, the system would rather incarcerate a boy than redeem him.

this feels like it should be horrifically symbolic with the themes of the season, if only for the idea that Dean won’t be redeemed this time around since he’s on his descent arc, something that was linked constantly with prison imagery on the way to becoming a demon.

probably some wider application too. idk >.>

* * *

> SONNY  
> Couldn’t have. (Shakes his head.) You know, I never – I never believed any of this mumbo-jumbo stuff you boys are into, but… something ain’t right. 

I think aside from the werewolf comment and whatever trouble Dean got in for carving the protective sigil there’s nothing else about young!Dean as a hunter in here? I’ve always liked that this episode COULD have been one of those 2 timezone episodes with something from the past that comes back and so on (like 11x16) but it wasn’t, and it completely makes the focus on the emotional stuff - like Dean’s time here would still have been important to a hypothetical ghost from the past, but the past is used ENTIRELY for character development, and I respect that a lot.

* * *

I will always love that image of Sam pulling off all the layers of other names to find Dean’s name… It’s DEEPLY symbolic for Dean’s character, and important to show we’re going to be exploring Dean’s character deeper than ever as we start his descent arc, and that it’s a character driven thing… but it’s also so important that Sam learns more about who Dean really is under all the layers, or at least they address it – we talked a LOT about “performing Dean” and “sanitised for Sammy” over season 10, and Sam forcing the “you love chick flicks” confession at the end of season 11 is a huge step forwards so again something I’m feeling considerably more relaxed about this being a thing that gets story attention than I would have even by 11x22… 

Anyway it’s specifically showing us Sam peeling back layers of wrong names to find Dean, but Dean is still actively lying to him right in the here and now. By the end of the episode, he doesn’t fully explain anything about his emotional journey from Sonny’s to Sam, a far as I recall. Like, Sam knows the basics, but Dean still keeps a lot of layers on top about it. And re: the previous point about the past and flashbacks only being for character development and the story not forcing all the details to the surface just being something that’s incidentally confronted here… it keeps it all locked up inside Dean.

* * *

Dean goes into the barn…

Basically everything I have to say about that is covered here:

<http://messier51.tumblr.com/post/68175526891/crucible-noun-a-place-or-situation-in-which>

so that saves me some time :P

* * *

Busy melting about Dean interacting with Tiny Tim so I’m glad I was spared needing to analyse this.

* * *

This part of Messier’s meta though:

> In his foray into the barn, Dean finds a child fighting monsters.  
> 
> Timmy claims that he’s there alone, fighting monsters, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world–him along with his evil-clobbering superhero-in-a-cape named Bruce. Dean tends to see his idols as heroes too; his Father was once an untouchable and irreproachable monster-clobbering superhero in Dean’s eyes. Castiel, likewise, used to be a  _real life superhero_ , complete with life-saving magical powers (and a cape coat). Dean also has an innate need to see himself as a hero, and to help save people. 

I think this post was written new at the time of the episode, so there’s some more hindsight on Dean as the action figure himself – Bruce has his great big hammer he uses to clobber evil, and of course over this season Dean is objectified into a killing machine to the end point where at least over hiatus we’re left thinking Crowley won and got to keep demon!Dean for himself as his own, like, ken doll action figure :P Of course Dean’s downfall, aside from the massive personal crisis, is that he’s still trying to fight evil and he’s seduced onto the path of violence with the promise of killing Abaddon, and then just refocuses that need to kill later. Anyway, tons of old Dean characterisation stuff gets hauled out over this arc, and this goes back to the “blunt little instrument” stuff, and so this is also about not just how Dean sees himself but there’s a darker side to it. (although the superhero thing kinda hangs around this season, I think? In Thinman there’s the whole little story about it – again, something from their childhood. And of course Dean’s always seen what they do as a very romanticised job – “I’m batman” back in season 3 being pretty meaningful for a jokey line)

* * *

> SAM  
> So … Dad didn’t want you to tell me. How come? Was this place really so bad?
> 
> DEAN  
> I don’t really remember. I mean, look, nobody bad touched me. Nobody burned me with their smokes, or beat me with a metal hanger. I call that a win.

My memory might be a bit rusty but does this ever get resolved even for audience satisfaction? Or is this question left for audience interpretation? 

The question keeps getting pushed but Sam doesn’t get great answers for a LOT of things this episode such as Dean not elaborating on why he left in the end. What we the audience know is the “let him rot” line from the past, and Dean’s careful working around this, and trying to say it wasn’t John’s fault, etc… aurgh, this might be something I need to watch all the way through and then make one response to it with all the information/lack of info. That line about incarceration vs redemption seems to work to suggest John misunderstood what Sonny’s was, and thought this was a sort of prison or a punishment for Dean and never would have intended it to “redeem” Dean in the sense of turning him a shade more civilian and rejecting the life – knowing Dean he would probably never have babbled happily about the experience and any sulking could be put down in John’s mind to having been put in (what did Cas call it in 10x09? Child prison? :P) rather than sulking because he hadn’t wanted to leave and was emotionally torn about doing so. (I think I’ve seen discussion that weighed it up that Dean’s reminiscing about his first kill in 2x03 with Gordon would be after this – especially since Dean was I think meant to be 14 originally when this episode was written? – and that memory was about cementing his idea of himself as a hunter, so you can easily see him throwing himself into the job and seeing no going back, as with many times Dean’s been teased with civilian life or opportunities)

Anyway Dean here makes another comparison which is pretty direct to actual horrible prison abuses or foster home abuse tropes, sort of emphasising the bare minimum at which life here scraped by as bearable, instead of raving about it, so I think “the story became the story” had to include an element of Dean taking this as a punishment, selling it as a punishment, and in the end also because he probably would have felt super guilty about enjoying himself or being torn about how much he would have wanted to stay, burying it all deep as if it HAD hurt him… probably being messed up enough to easily sell it as punishment, before rebounding hard as he does into trying to live what he’s supposed to. Focusing on being a good hunter because that was who he was supposed to be – so putting himself on that process that eventually turns him into nothing more than a weapon.

(He’s also wearing his maroon shirt, at least for the salt n burn)

* * *

Oh also the “15 minutes into the episode false lead” as always doing a good job with the story being wrong theme

* * *

…..

Cus’s place

Hi Robin who wears purple, is introduced standing in front of slush machines, and is an old spurned love of Dean’s. I’m sure my tag for this episode has nothing about you in it :P

* * *

(Cas’s slushies were red and blue, conflict colours. Hers are orange and yellow, and considering I spent some of 9x06 waffling about closed coffee cups vs open ones, Cas’s machine was all closed up with a single drum, hers are the big vat style ones which are completely transparent, accessible, and easy to clean and refill…… speaking as a professional who spent 2 summers learning all the ways to douse yourself in ice cream and slush from similar machines :P Anyway her relationship with Dean is all out in the open and there for us to see, but Cas has the machines which obscure much of the slush… a slushie subtext if you will)

* * *

Also I mean I know there’s so much said about this but Dean detouring ridiculously to see her, just like seeing Cas was optional to his original plan in 9x06

* * *

Hey, love me anything which queer-codes the whole hunter thing: this conversation is basically the concerned but supportive “are you gay” parent talk:

> SONNY  
> Let me ask you something, and I want you to be straight with me. Are you into the whole heavy-metal, devil-worshiping stuff?
> 
> YOUNG DEAN  
> What? No.
> 
> SONNY  
> Hey, I’m not – I’m not judging. It’s just I found a few occult-looking symbols carved into your bedpost.

“I want you to be straight with me” pfft I always laugh just on principle

…

I mean like, “I’m not judging I just found ~thing which indicates lifestyle~ in your private sleeping area.”

There’s pleeenty which does this with any real pointing out of their counter-culture lives across the show, but this is a very directly scripted conversation and using Dean to do it, so it’s worth a serious mention :P If you see academic-sounding stuff about the show talking about this sort of thing, it’s conversations like this which are kind of the centre point.

(Like that scene in one of the early X Men movies which was pretty much literally a coming out conversation except about being a mutant, and intended to be seen that way)

* * *

Anyway Dean is down to 1 layer of clothes at Sonny’s, and that’s amazing :P Like, if nothing else this episode is like “LOL HE’S SO LAYERED”

* * *

> YOUNG DEAN  
> Well, it’s a family thing, so I can’t really talk about it.
> 
> SONNY  
> Same family that left you here?

Low blow playing off of his abandonment issues, Sonny. You heard the “let him rot” thing too.

Considering said abandonment issues are heavily in the spotlight with the main drama this half of the season and I’ve already spent a great deal of time waffling about them since 8x22 and its lead up to this arc, I like there’s an episode here like “hey look it’s all John’s fault”

* * *

> SONNY  
> I should have been loyal to myself. Because you get one shot at this game, Dean, and when you look in the mirror, you want the guy looking back at you to be his own man.

Dean by season 9 being on MULTIPLE different shots at the game, mostly because the other players wouldn’t let him off the board… Also, considering the lowkey Dream a Little Dream of me vibe with the John stuff, the “look in the mirror” stuff is made so important by that episode – and then of course the end of this season has Dean’s descent marked in mirror gazing and not liking what he sees as he loses control of himself.

* * *

Anyway Dean’s “hi Robin” face is functionally no different from the “beef jerky and pack of menthols” face have a good day

* * *

(I typed ‘god day’ but you know what he’s bi too :P)

* * *

Everyone’s a jilted lover! \o/

* * *

Bonus: she’s working in the café because her dreams fell through and she couldn’t do what she wanted, just like working at the Gas n Sip wasn’t exactly Cas’s life plan, but he tried to find a bit of happiness and meaning once he was there, too

* * *

Anyway back at the house Dean sticks up for Tiny Tim and makes me wonder if he was bullied at and then sends me down at 3 hour staring into the void time warp (at least I’m halfway through the episode in 1 evening even if it’s past midnight now >.>) wondering about the fact Sonny says the home is under-populated recently but we never see any boys in the past with Dean, and we’re getting such selective memories of his time there and yes obviously the focus is on Robin with little time to show his other experiences, but that just makes me madly curious about what they WERE. See also: that really long meta about Dean’s season 2 gay panic where I squinted at 2x20 leaving out the male influence in Dean’s life in the form of absent workmates/drinking buddies/whatever, and just serving up his personal life as Carmen when that wasn’t the whole story (vs, of course, 6x01, which mimicked 2x20 but threw in Sid the neighbour/drinking buddy who we see Dean seriously bond with) … basically there’s a blatant gap in the story and all we know is that Dean joined the wrestling team :P

(*clears throat* *squints in no particular direction at the fact we now know Dean’s first TV crush and just how freakin’ gay he was for him*)

Anyway there’s a world of formative experience there – the one time Dean was settled and doing well at school, a sports team, the boys from the home… I don’t doubt his crush on Robin won out to become his brief teen love interest just because yikes teen Dean under those conditions even thinking of exploring his sexuality – especially when Robin is the safe option because he’s uncomplicatedly attracted to girls too, and as a bonus she confirms his heterosexuality to everyone around him, being the only girl who’s not Ruth the old housekeeper who ever comes near this male-centred world of Sonny’s:

> ROBIN  
> Hey, guys!
> 
> KID 2  
> She could give me a lesson anytime.

* * *

Between those scenes, Sam sees the wrestling certificates on the wall, and finds out some more stuff about Dean which he wasn’t told - I think he’s missed every previous indication from the episode that Dean was thriving there (which was all in flashbacks, and Dean just saying he didn’t get abused while he was there)

it’s a surface level detail that’s been on the wall clear to see for like 3 previous trips through this hall but Sam has only just noticed it.

* * *

And then again in the barn, Sam gets Tiny Tim’s story through the writing on the wall

* * *

How to kill a Dean!girl in a few easy steps:

> YOUNG ROBIN  
> What’s your dad do?
> 
> YOUNG DEAN  
> Boring stuff.
> 
> YOUNG ROBIN  
> Do you like it?
> 
> YOUNG DEAN  
> No, not really. But my dad expects me to follow in his footsteps. So I’ve kind of gotten used to it.

CRIPPLING OBLIGATION TO FAMILY DUTY

> YOUNG DEAN  
> (takes a breath)  
> I want to be a rock star, but… I also really like cars. 

HOPES AND DREAMS THAT WILL NEVER BE REALISED

> YOUNG DEAN  
> What? No, no. Not at all. Cars are freaking cool as hell. Fixing them is like … a puzzle, and the best part is when you’re done, they leave, and you’re not responsible for them anymore. 

WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS THAT MAKES EVERY DEAN FIXING THE CAR MOMENT FROM 2x02 TO 7x01 EVEN WORSE SOMEHOW

> YOUNG ROBIN  
> Have you kissed many girls?
> 
> YOUNG DEAN  
> What? Yeah. Of course. Lots.

POOR FLUSTERED BABY 

the “crippling obligation etc” gets well-explored with how Dean leaves (see also: all the “look out for Sammy” in the recap), but the “you’re not responsible for them any more” is probably the worst line in this episode. And why I suggested the clothing parallels to Tiny Tim chasing the bullies in the opening lining up to Dean’s duty to his family that’s killing him AND all his relationships to said family. Robin acts as a parallel to him as well, with her own unrealised dreams being directly compared to Dean’s - we KNOW as we’ve already met her in the present, that she never goes on her adventures and she does inherit the diner like her father wants her to. So the immediate comparison is that Dean is, in the future, in the exact same space. He can still fix cars like she plays guitar, but the duty to the job has been put too heavily on their shoulders to truly go their own ways.

And of course it’s always nice to have moments someone sees through Dean’s bluster, and it’s kind of subversive for his character just to show him NOT being so smooth. Since the bleh surface level is of him as such a ladykiller… 

in flashbacks with Sam I think we see at least twice he swoops in for the first kiss with teenage girlfriends/love interests - to the point Lucifer throws him a party for his assertiveness. It seems obvious Dean would be painted in contrast to this, but I’m still impressed they showed us his dorky awkward first kiss and didn’t play up the “expected” route. 

(I’m actually quite fond of the no-romo aro!Dean meta I once read about this scene just because he is so surprised and I think wasn’t expecting it really, just feeling a kind of comfortable friendly vibe to open up to her and not considering that she HAD to be his girlfriend to be this close to her… I can easily read him as demiromantic and tbh I’d skip from Robin (he seems to have developed some level of feelings by the time of the dance after recalculating a bit like a lost GPS and getting used to the idea of her as a girlfriend instead) and Cassie right through to Cas - Lisa is a lot of important things to him, but not one of his great life-changing romances, and he doesn’t tend to fall romantically for the girl of the week in normal-er situations than next episode (which is sucking up my focus for examples >.>) and sees them very clearly as hook ups, while Sam for example in early seasons clearly has the beginnings of romantic relationships with Taylor in hookman and Sarah in provenance after meeting them just for the length of a case, or the disaster for him that was Madison with a romantic subplot powering the episode.)

(On the other hand, and I’m saying this hypothetically as a reading because I do think his attraction to girls shouldn’t be glossed over and Robin is important in his history, those thoughts about her as a sort of obvious demonstration of his heterosexuality and a good way to pave over any teenage gay panic are a thing… I hate to pull this parallel because I tend to out of sight out of mind it, but we’re only a handful of episodes from 9x03, and April surprising Cas with a kiss, and the steps are very similar, with both of them hesitant and confused, and the one kissing them pressing the matter with next to no input except Dean and Cas then kiss back on the second attempt, once they understand the situation. 

There are many reasons Dean could have been resisting the idea of romance with her up to that point, the obvious being that he’d have in the back of his mind the reason it did end eventually, that this was temporary and he knew he had a bigger job to do, as their conversation was just covering before she kisses him.

 But on the whole this half of the season - with Rock and a Hard Place up next - pretty much all (except 9x04) deal - but not to a satisfying degree (except 9x06) - with a lot of themes of identity and relationships, specifically romantic and sexual, which is rare for the show which normally focuses on family. TFW are sort of re-learning themselves and NOT doing it very well. The conspiracy that 9x08 and 9x06 should have been adjacent puts an emphasis on the sexual side of stuff but in this order, the emphasis is on lost loves, yearning, and fucking up past relationships, which then leads into Dean’s hook up crisis next episode, followed by the hell that is flirty DeanCas in 9x09 as they apply their recent life lessons at each other.

Anyway, and in this case I’m not super fond of it, if you want to question Dean’s sexuality you have to question his initial interest in Robin and look at what else she represents, specifically the safety of conformity and doing what is expected etc, and there’s just enough hesitance and confusion in Dean’s reaction to being kissed for me to parallel it into the main arc stuff like Cas’s learning how to human in 9x03 and 9x06, showing both their baby steps on human relationships side by side. Which means you can bring Cas’s entire “because that’s what humans do - go on expected hetero dates” kind of mentality down on Dean “humanity” Winchester)

* * *

Dean’s using his “weirded out” face from 7x17 when he encounters a wild adult Robin.

You know the “weirded out” face

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/101940396738/mishasminions-7x17-script-excerpt-a-little>

* * *

> YOUNG ROBIN  
> I just hope this lasts.
> 
> YOUNG DEAN  
> I’m not going anywhere, Robin.

Oh no *wibbles emotionally about this* He let himself believe he could staaay

The fact we’ve seen 4 varieties of Dean clothes which are functionally no different from what he wears day to day in the main canon or has been spotted wearing on rare occasions (Led Zeppelin t-shirt… HOLD ME.) is actually kind of killing me. :P Like, Dean, I know you experiment with nicer suits from time to time, but I wouldn’t actually have flinched to see young you wearing a plaid shirt you still have THIS SEASON

Hire a personal stylist next season pls

Anyway smooth af Dean asserts himself finally to ask her to the dance

* * *

I still can not believe he has a jilted lover backstory the episode after he had to go face the music with Cas

* * *

Present day Robin is wearing the same plaid pattern as past Dean on the day he asked her to the dance – she’s not let go >.>

* * *

> TIMMY  
> I can’t control her.

He says standing in front of a bowl of red apples aka fresh fruit of doom

aka this imagery has been around FOREVER. With it being red apples that goes back to 8x03, which also had all the Mark of Cain pre-arc kick off imagery, and of course the theme of out of control over-protective vengeful ghosts is INTENSELY Dean and connected strongly to his arc in the same way vampires are. 10x13 especially has a hideously obvious parallel using a vengeful ghost as a Dean mirror when he’s at one of the lower points of the arc (there’s like eight lowest points >.>)

* * *

I really like this episode because just when you think you’re done being fucked up by Dean, Sam comes diving in from stage right like,

> SAM (continues)  
> Timmy, listen. We need you to tell us about the fire, okay?

WHAM.

Kids with destructive fire in their past that cost them their mom? Yeah sure Dean has the same thing, but it’s Sam’s MYTHARC for 7 seasons. That look is all Sam’s sense of personal responsibility for everyone who ever got hurt because of him, seeing a kid who has a ton of people getting hurt because of HIS same problem…

(In a wider season 9 sense, this is going back to Sam’s original crap, and of course he’s currently possessed by Mr Accidentally Caused Everything Ever Because Lucifer… the emotional resonance between Sam and Gadreel KILLS me, and we’re 3 episodes from finding out that his story tracks back to the very beginning too.)

* * *

There’s a lot to say for overbearing protective parental figures who need to learn to let go & be let go (which is why Tiny Tim swings around to be a Sam mirror all of a sudden because Dean is the one in the parental role at this point, and needs to learn to let go), but we have a new parallel for 11x23, and Amara peacing out and choosing the path of letting go of her vengeance too, and her obsession with Dean which you could read as over-protective to the point of not caring about his interests despite how flippin terrified he was of her.

And of course Mary is back and at this point Mary parallels like this are fascinating. I guess you’d have once meta’d this as her crippling weight on their lives as the fridged catalyst to the show being needed to be banished as well because it’s fucking them up… At this point like I was saying about the use of Mary photos last episode, Sam’s actually the only one semi-textually connected to them, from the 8x23 deleted scene where Dean attempts to emotionally blackmail Sam over why they do the job as his Worst Pep Talk Ever, throwing a folder at him with their photo of Mary. Sam later, actually textually, uses the photos in emotional blackmail against Dean to drag him back from the brink… I think this all goes back to 1x01:

> SAM  
> No. I’m not like you. This is not going to be my life.
> 
> DEAN  
> You have a responsibility to—
> 
> SAM  
> To Dad? And his crusade?  **If it weren’t for pictures I wouldn’t even know what Mom looks like**. And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom’s gone. And she isn’t coming back.
> 
> DEAN grabs SAM by the collar and shoves him up against the railing of the bridge. A long pause.
> 
> DEAN  
> Don’t talk about her like that.

In one neat exchange, summing up both their relationships to the Icons of Saint Mary (aka the rare photos they owned back then) and their obligation to the job, or not. Dean uses Mary to keep Sam obligated and on the job, but she’s entirely metaphorical to him, and accessed only through these photos. For Dean she’s SLIGHTLY more of a person, but only in a hazy first four years of his life knowledge of her: if we compare relationships to Mary like relationships to God, Dean is Metatron and Sam is Cas. :P

… this is getting extremely abstract

Anyway herein lies a warning for season 12 about Mary and how they may look at her, and how she may feel about them.

* * *

(And of course with Sam the one kidnapped and hurt and lost, he’s Tiny Tim, with Mary on the team trying to find him, to put in context how Tiny Tim’s mother’s actions might relate to Mary, especially re: overprotective compensation from beyond the grave for all the missing time/moments she couldn’t look after him before)

* * *

The miscalculation where Dean burns the action figure to save Tiny Tim but just destroys something precious (and a representation of his Self) in the process is just…

> ACTION FIGURE DOLL’S VOICE   
>  _I clobber evil! … I clobber evil! … I clobber evil! … I … clobber … evil!_

Hideously grim for what’s to come :P in its guttural death throws I SWEAR it groans “I… kill… aaalll” but I may just be way too into this imagery :P

* * *

And then of course the idea that a ghost can haunt a person and be connected to THEM (gyah the wifi episode was stupid when this is how it was done first) and the only way to rid them of the vengeful spirit was for them both to let go of this toxic bond… I LOVE the symbolism in this episode

* * *

I think there was an ad break after Sam points out Tiny Tim is the one haunted, and that’s a nice long time to leave you to think they may burn the kid, so Haunted Kidneys is FINALLY usurped.

* * *

It’s probably pretty symbolic just that the mom seems to be blind as a result of the injuries she’s carried through to death, as her eyes are misted over:

> SAM  
> Maybe she doesn’t know what threats are real and what’s not, so she just attacks all of them.

* * *

> DEAN  
> She’s a ghost. Timmy, because she can’t move on, she’s going crazy. Okay? You got to let her go. You’ll be okay.
> 
> Listen to me. Sometimes you got to do what’s best for you, even if it’s gonna hurt the ones you love.

*flops over and whines*

This is alarmingly close to the first time a MotW has ever nearly made me cry? The whole Mary thing is really fucking me up :P Because of course then Timmy stops her and finally lets her move on and the scared little boy, who is representing Sam and Dean both, gets to let go of the spectre of grief he couldn’t move past.

This is 3 episodes in a row as well of the resolution involving fucked up emotional responses one way or another – 9x05, Dean blames Chef Leo’s comments on him being all jacked up on what he’d been eating and going crazy because of it. In 9x06 Cas explains the Rit Zien as having no idea wtf he’s doing because human emotion is too complex and so he’s lashing out trying to end all pain and suffering, and now here she’s “going crazy” because she can’t move on and responding over-dramatically to any tiny threat to Timmy’s wellbeing. And being in season 9, the Gadreel thing is looming ever closer, with the idea of Dean losing control of him (as he’s painted as a villain up until he returns at the end of the season for a redemption arc) and of course, then immediately after that, Dean losing control of himself. (And Dean’s forced immortality ends up, by the end of season 10, being the biggest issue – he CAN’T move on and, to prove how fucked up 10x23 was (alternate interpretation I’ve been going on about for 2 episodes about suicide aside), Sam STOPS him moving on, using the images of Mary, and they refuse to let go.) (obviously I don’t think Dean should have killed Sam either, but that episode was wholly fucked up and part of it was denying literally every single episode about letting go and moving on since, like, ever… right back to that Roadkill episode in season 2 I think, if that was the first time they talked a ghost into willingly leaving?)

* * *

(I don’t think it escapes Sam and Dean’s notice how much the mom looks like Mary – they look totally wrecked by her transformation before she goes)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, as you can see, I did not run off to become a rock star.
> 
> ROBIN  
> Mm… I don’t know about that. You look pretty rockin’ to me, Dean Winchester.
> 
> DEAN  
> And what about you?
> 
> ROBIN  
> I mean, I always thought that I would hate being in the same little town my whole life, and, you know, taking over the diner like Dad always wanted, but … I don’t. I just – I love it.
> 
> DEAN  
> I guess we didn’t know everything we thought we did at 16, huh?

I… don’t buy it just on the principle Dean still has his own yearning for that other life, and as long as the Dean and pie stuff carries on (as I’ve been discussing all day on my blog slowing up this rewatch to wonder how much pie Mary WON’T make him in season 12 :P) he’s going to have a part of him that feels like something more than what he has.

(but the point about not knowing everything at 16 is still pretty valid :P Even if in this case it’s more like, didn’t know we’d end up back where we started)

* * *

> SAM  
> Hey, h-how did you know Timmy asking his mom to leave was gonna work?
> 
> DEAN  
> I didn’t. Total hail Mary. Got lucky.

I am conditioned to expect Dean is lying when he’s met with a question like this, which seems kind of harmless in context but seems to betray at least some sort of subconscious emotional pain if nothing else – his attunement to the situation, or accidentally feeling the sense of the mom as a Gadreel mirror that could be ejected if Timmy knew what to do about it… who even knows :P

* * *

> SAM (continues)  
> Kind of like you did with this place. I mean, here I was thinking this was the worst part of your life, and it turns out it was the best. Why’d you ever leave?
> 
> DEAN  
> Never felt right.
> 
> SAM  
> Really?
> 
> DEAN  
> It was two months, Sam, okay? And I couldn’t wait to get out of here. I don’t know what to tell you. It wasn’t me.

Like this, where he’s blatantly lying.

(The worst part is cutting to young Dean enthusiastically getting ready for the dance led into via sad music and a mournful look on Dean’s face, when we’re on the other side of the sad impala conversation of the end of the episode and everything and like, at this point how can it possibly go wrong in a matter of moments to end Dean’s happy “I’m not going anywhere” feeling about Sonny’s…)

Anyway yeah, Sam may not have got the full story even without this but he intuited enough to realise how settled and happy Dean must have been there. Dean continues on with “the story became the story” that he didn’t WANT to be at Sonny’s, possibly because that’s the only way he could live with this in his memories, and of course he makes his decisions to fling himself into the life on the other side of this, and he and Robin act happy to be where they are in their lives…

* * *

*curls protectively around young!Dean because he’s crying and I hate that I can’t look after him* :P

> SONNY (continues)  
> You know, after I got out of jail, this place gave me a second chance, and it’s done the same for you, too.

Dean rejects his second chance which ALSO isn’t horrifically ominous about what’s to come for him now, basically showing us that he’s lived this rejection of happiness ever since – and of course showing us it’s for Sam’s sake (with the shadowy dark figure of John in the car – I am so amused that after all this time when in season 1 Azazel was always shown as just a shadowy man and John was too at several points, this same image persists…)

I mean I guess it’s also a rejection of living normally which 9x06 did for Cas too, as I went into in exhaustive detail last episode :P

* * *

> YOUNG DEAN  
> Sonny… …thank you – for everything. But I have to go.

You can tell Sonny’s family because he gets the standard thank you for everything & hug farewell >.>

* * *

Sam tries the same thing before the credits:

> SAM  
> Dean … Thank you.
> 
> DEAN  
> For what?
> 
> SAM  
> For always being there, for – having my back. Look, I know it always hasn’t been easy …
> 
> DEAN  
> I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Possibly just because self-reflection, although I guess he’s got to be translating Dean’s over-cautious concern which is actually directed at Gadreel asking 12 times if he really wants to do every hunt, as actually looking out for him and so on. I think he can kind of intuit why Dean would have left or he wouldn’t be saying this, but he obviously can’t see the whole thing, and Dean shuts him down rather than share all the emotional crap about it because he does not want to be forced into any self-reflection, and of course what with lying to Sam while running a long con on his life over his consent… He feels in no place to take Sam’s gratitude for looking out for him, not when he knows what sort of dark form not being able to let go looks like when it comes to Sam.


	8. 9x08

or:  …. So anyway, how’s Sam doing this episode?

* * *

“hey remember the weird dragon episode?”

“…no”

“we should totally try and sell this episode in the recap as if it’s going to be another weird dragon episode!!”

“why are you doing this”

* * *

Aw, the diner is “Casey’s diner” after “Cus’s place” last episode. I wonder if there’s a theme. 

* * *

Sam is asleep on the kitchen table, having not finished his cereal

… yes, that table.

This is the first time we see it in action! I’m excited. And also suspect there’s nothing significant going on here because I’m fairly sure he’s in “Cas’s” seat and Dean just plonked himself down in “Sam’s”

(It’s 9x13 which set the rules up, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s not like Cas even has a seat until 10x18, and Sam and Dean still indiscriminately use the various seats at the end of the table in non-dramatic moments depending on who is walking through the door so the director needs to plonk the other somewhere complementary :P)

* * *

I’m not entirely sure why Sam passed out like that though, since Gadreel hasn’t had to emergency resurrect or heal anyone for two episodes and Sam had a very chill time of it for those 2 episodes; he didn’t even leave the Bunker for one of them. Again, the spectre of the conspiracy that all the early season 9 episodes were somehow shuffled raises its head although tbh all the things making me wonder about episode order all suggest various different orders, so I would like to propose another idea: none of the writers talked properly about the nitty gritty continuity and this is  _sort of a disaster so no wonder you can shuffle them however you like_.

Dean and Sam recap 9x06′s plot to each other, however, as if little time had elapsed since:

> SAM Huh. What about Crowley? Um, do you think he might be lying about the whole, uh, “Metatron’s spell being irreversible” thing?
> 
> DEAN Oh, Crowley lie? I do know one thing. Next time that junkie’s jonesing for a hit of blood, we got leverage.

it seems very weird they never talked about this for the space of however long between 9x06 and 9x08 even with a hunt in between. 

… I’m not sure I LIKE this theory since it seems to imply the episodes were shifted to stop it sounding too obviously like Dean hooked up with Cas, like, a step too far or something even for this show’s subtext but I know the episode order was at least initially mis-reported and then for whatever reason this is how they actually aired… There may be a completely benign reason if the order was screwed up (I also don’t know if I credit the really higher high ups with ever thinking about this sort of thing - the 9x03 nonsense proved they don’t even think about it so intervention from on high seems completely unlikely) - like all the other slightly headachey continuity, such as where Kevin is and why, or they thought Sam and Dean’s stories made more sense this way OR they just wanted to space out Cas episodes. Or, I mean if you saw the 9x03 reaction in real time and had control of the episode order, would YOU quietly slip 9x06 further down the order as far as possible for damage control? :P See, load of ways to tinhat something else there.

* * *

In any case, putting ONE episode between them doesn’t actually stop anyone who’s heavily invested in the emotional arc from stopping and squinting at Dean’s speech and being like “.. is he talking about Cas” although I suppose you could argue with Bad Boys in between, it tries to suggest Dean is romantically unfulfilled by meeting Robin again and leaving, though with no time to hook up left for them in that episode while Cas and Dean have a whole missing night. :P

* * *

> DEAN You’re sick.
> 
> SAM No, I’m not sick. I’m just, um – I feel like my battery can’t recharge.

#about me

well okay I perpetually have a billion symptoms and I’m definitely sick but the faulty battery is the core :P

Like the Mark of Cain arc (where every episode had a wild new interpretation on like 6 different points of characterisation), Sam was saying Dean was getting worse every week, Dean’s been accusing Sam of being tired every episode, but this is the only one to actually show it while others had him out jogging and living the life, or being perfectly well and ready to go on hunts and baffled about why Dean was telling him he was tired. I’m not sure if there was just some missed subtlety here like the directors and Jared should have known to make Sam a bit more obviously floppy and worn out just as a default, or, stacking 6 episodes against 1, this one mistakes all Dean’s comments perhaps just from having scripts without seeing the final footage, and interprets Sam as literally tired, accidentally maintexting how Dean’s been telling Sam he’s tired and needs to rest instead of having it as Dean attempting to control and convince Sam he’s tired to manage the Gadreel thing quietly… Which accidentally then does sort of half vindicate Dean at least for apparently not gas lighting Sam over this detail, although, you know, Sam’s still unwittingly possessed by an angel. :P

*throws confetti* there’s no correct interpretation of this show because this show has no correct main text 

* * *

Dean can’t even park straight

* * *

> JODY Wh– angels? You’re joking.
> 
> DEAN Don’t get your pants on fire. They suck.

I guess normally I’d say with an obvious exception but the obvious exception isn’t currently an angel :P This is just Dean complaining about his family.

* * *

I feel like I saw season 9 meta somewhere about the comparison with the girl from the cold open giving the homeless guy food and so on, to the obvious thing from 9x03… Overall season 9 has a sort of thing about homelessness because Metatron at the end of the season uses it for faux humility while staging his big plan. In this case the guy is trusted to be reliable despite being homeless because they’re understanding of his place on the fringes of society and know if he saw something weird he may not be wrong or making it up… Jody seems less certain:

> SAM You said there was a witness.
> 
> JODY Yeah, well…more or less.

Although she’s still willing to hear him out and doesn’t dismiss his story because she knows there may be more to it and she’s willing enough to listen if she got Sam and Dean in to help her :P 

(This is her first case since mid season 7, and that was sort of her first real hunt and she stayed at the house researching, so this is really the first episode we have her in the field since season 5 helping with the zombies at the end? After this it becomes expected she’s competent as a hunter rather than law enforcement/ground control style support, and by now we just assume she will take part in the episode, but this is actually breaking ground for her. Idk why it took so long for them to realise “friendly sheriff works cases with them” could be a thing and now we get Jody AND Donna in that style. Good times. :3 Anyway I’d have thought 7x12 should have been enough to make her more credible to stuff like trusting the word of random homeless guys who witness supernatural events since she and Sam worked on putting together a narrative from very shaky sources and people whose word should have sounded like nonsense, but I guess that was 2 years ago at this point so they have to bring her around slowly?)

* * *

> JODY Yeah. They were all members of Good Faith church here. My, uh, my church group back in Sioux Falls was in a tizzy over it.
> 
> DEAN Hmm.
> 
> JODY What?
> 
> DEAN I didn’t peg you for churchy.
> 
> JODY Yeah. You know… Choking on the ladies’ room floor ‘cause of witchcraft kind of makes a higher power seem relevant.

Like in 9x03, actual experience of angels and the divine suggesting they suck is trumped by someone finding faith in a way that comforts them. 

* * *

Vesta/the lady at the church is wearing purple, which is a serious thing this season… I guess it’s linking the characters in the arc I was talking about last episode, in this sort of exploration of romantic/sexual stuff for TFW which makes this part of the season both really interesting and a total minefield :P 

April is in this shade of purple after she reveals she’s a reaper, representing quite dangerous sides of the “distraction” it can cause (ick, but that was the “moral” of the story Cas seemed to take from it and she tricked him and got his guard down that way), then Cas in stripes of the same colour 9x06 dealing with how to be human, with a focus on dating/being a jilted lover, then Robin, who while she was wearing purple was wearing it as a uniform at the diner and mirrored Cas from the previous episode that way, AND was linked to Dean’s past as his first girlfriend, which was then explored. 

Now we have Sam and Dean taking their virgin pledge from a woman in this same colour (the goddess enforcing this chastity), and honestly I’m way more interested in Sam right now (a great deal of the reaction shots are on him) because 11x04 lampshaded as a joke that he’d been a “virgin” for two seasons, Robbie remembering that continuity to poke fun at. 11x04 definitely had Sam in a place of emotional healing and being able to consider the future for himself and to want things more than just the narrow scope of their lives, but obviously pointing out how LONG that took him, serves to highlight how Not Okay he was for all the intervening time. (he is abducted by Gadreel next episode, finds out about it the one after that, then the next Dean returns with the Mark of Cain, aka the olde timey brother killin’ curse as far as they know, and I think Sam does not sleep, period, for the next year and a half and is understandably stressed and not in a place to have much positive personal growth with all that going on for him :P)

Not that Dean was any better over that time, but it wasn’t represented by unintentionally honouring his vow of chastity :P it’s been argued all sorts of ways about this episode how Dean is actually freaking out and in a tail spin and that’s why HE hooks up with Suzy. Sam, as he often does, contrasts Dean, and as his stuff often is, is done with absence and NOT depicting him doing anything so by 11x04 it’s like “christ, that long??!” without anything in the intervening time to seriously remind us of the ongoing absence of sex/romance in his life, so 11x04 comes as a very long awaited punchline to this episode. 

And I find that interesting that Dean and Cas were paralleled against each other 16 year old Dean to newly human Cas figuring out WTF they’re doing, maybe not comfortable or happy or satisfied but learning along the way. But Sam takes this pledge and I guess I should really get to this in the stuff about him in the group meeting, but it’s just part of the stuff where he shuts down hard - and I think he’s been doing that since pretty much ever anyway on a whole range of things, but it gives us a clear example to look at anyway. I guess following mostly Destiel/Dean/Cas blogs means I rarely see much discussion of Sam, but I think we at least acknowledge he’s been battling pretty serious depression as much as any of the other main characters, but it often manifests itself this way in Sam shutting down parts of himself or being increasingly reserved… And so for Sam in this space of time, to contrast to the rest of TFW, or even the main 4 characters as Crowley is on one hell of a journey this season including a from-his-POV romantic subplot with Dean, he has an episode where casually going undercover as virgins just to investigate the case accidentally is one of the few noticeable mile markers on his 3-4 season dry spell since Amelia.

* * *

> DEAN Well, you had me at “clean slate”“ Let’s do this. 

I feel weirdly sad remembering last episode because he rejected a “second chance” at Sonny’s and now he’s making light of the clean slate here. And as I keep on going on about this season isn’t one of second chances and a clean slate for him - it’s about messing up and miring himself in the consequences of his actions

* * *

I’ve always kind of liked the girl using her taser as a light source in the dungeon. Handy in a pinch, and can be used as a weapon immediately if anything attacks her :P

There’s a nice little shot where she’s backing away and it’s basically just the blue light of her taser and the red/gold light of a candle:

I guess a tiny beacon of light for safety. I dunno, I like the way the two tiny points of light look.

* * *

> SUZY Sam, what brought you here to reclaim your virginity?
> 
> SAM Well, I guess because every woman I’ve…ever… had relations with, uh…it…hasn’t ended well.
> 
> DEAN [chuckling] He ain’t lying.
> 
> SUZY Thank you for being here, Sam. Stay strong. Stay pure.
> 
> ALL THE WOMEN Stay strong. Stay pure.

Sam is pretty emotionally honest there… Dean finds it funny, looking at Sam’s history from an outside perspective and finding irony in how none of the women there could know how ridiculous “hasn’t ended well” is if they knew the whole story… Not stopping to think about how much Sam’s horrible love life could have actually affected him or that Sam might actually be serious about sharing this because it hurts and this is a place to air it in a safe environment (possibly because this is so antithesis to the way Dean works emotionally re: voicing anything that even he knows Sam does the caring and sharing thing, it’s hard for Dean to understand someone would ever voluntarily share stuff like this without making it into a joke?). Sam though genuinely seems to be taking a chance to emotionally unburden. His history does cause him pain, and it’s like he suddenly sees the fresh start option as a way to move past all that old hurt… The fact 11x04 then makes it clear with the reference back to this episode that he genuinely did wait until he was emotionally healing in some small ways, and that he stuck to his chastity vow (not like he goes around sleeping with tons of people normally, but point stands :P) gives a very strange hindsight on this scene of Sam not just being sincere, but genuinely staying “strong and pure” at least until it no longer served him to have that fortification.

(I wonder if Dean threw Sam that big party in 11x04 because he kind of did instinctively know the change it represented for Sam?)

* * *

Anyway then Dean makes himself sad, trying to talk his way through to any reason why someone like him would take a chastity vow in the first place. He’s got a sort of emotional arc here of starting out kind of confused, accidentally wanders way too deep:

> Then, it’s the whole morning thing. You know, "Hey, that was fun.” And then, “adios,” you know? Always the “adios.”

And then quickly bounces back into being flippant and getting way too into describing sex, almost like a rebound from the sad moment :P

I don’t think I really have anything to prove about this moment >.> “adios” has its own link, via the same writer, to Benny and that “adios” back in 8x10. We have Dean having recently “adios”ed Cas. He never actually slept with Robin ever so in many ways this can’t be about her, but there’s a yearning in the thought of leaving hook ups behind and never having more, for the elusive romance, one of the earliest suggestions for Dean he might desire something more on that front for some time (since the Lisa build up?) before we get to stuff like the 10x16 confessional moment or whatever.

(And yeah I know there’s no proof Dean hooked up with Cas in that gap and blah blah constantly operating on 2 levels about where I see that in terms of suggestion/what I accept in my own personal “why not” interpretation of the show, but the amount of wistfulness at the end of 9x06 being sort of the main point of that moment for Dean has it very much an “adios” he regrets as textually things are left between him and Cas as a morning after what he wanted to be a fun encounter (see also: my comment that “hunting” was basically just code for “dating” in that episode) but of course left wanting more with things unsaid: the obvious fact he’s lying to Cas but doesn’t want to be, the fact he has to leave Cas behind instead of taking him home. So even on a surface level friendship way, things were a metaphorical equivalent of this “always the adios” concept Dean suggests. But yeah the romantic subtext exists ALSO, so even if they didn’t hook up, the feeling is there. And then there’s room for the interpretation it WAS the morning after.)

* * *

Since I’m here fully intending to gloss over Dean’s creepy obsession with Suzy, and also ignoring the… joke? About the fat girl stealing food, and the general unpleasant cattiness of the women in the group bitching about each other and upset about favouritism… (*clears throat*) let’s focus on how further to all the other Sam stuff I said, Dean splitting off to go chat up Suzy leaves Sam the one who is forced to give a reaction to the Purity meeting to Vesta:

> BONNIE So?
> 
> SAM So?
> 
> BONNIE How did you like the meeting?
> 
> SAM Oh, I-I-I-I loved it. Yeah.

Obviously over-selling it because it was awkward and terrible, and Sam had to suffer through listening to Dean’s spontaneous erotic poetry recital, but the fact he’s the one who’s made to respond to it is something I kind of like, given this follows him unexpectedly for 2 seasons, thank god the first writer to let Sam get some was one of the ones who nerds out about continuity like that :P

* * *

Honestly, the least realistic thing in this episode is Suzy cheerfully inviting Dean back (and not even intending to hook up with him at that point) for private study sessions, after he comes on strong like “do I know you” because even a dude who looks as good as Dean, that should raise serious alarm bells about a creeper or at LEAST if you’ve turned down unwanted attention, you don’t invite the dude back home anyway.

* * *

It’s called survival instincts.

* * *

I love that really plaid room just because it’s awful

* * *

Also Sam n Jody interacting and I still think they should married so I appreciate that a lot >.>

> SAM Wait a second. Did you…get –
> 
> JODY Born again?
> 
> SAM Yeah.
> 
> JODY Oh, Sam. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.

*quietly attempts to smush them together*

* * *

I mean then they kind of bond over being emotionally damaged except Jody lists that she’s also, on top of her last family, mourning Bobby, and mentions her disastrous date with Crowley, but honestly, Dean hooks up with Crowley by next season, and if that dreadful episode which has Sam and Dean realise they hooked up with the same hunter who also hooked up with Bobby once has to be a thing which is in canon, at least we can use it to say this is by far not the worst they can do :P

* * *

(This show… gets so weird… when anything about sex comes up… ever. Well, maybe some of the wholesome good relationships where the romance was the fore, but anything where “sex” is more the sort of topic of the week instead of something happening incidentally to a relationship and it’s like immediately diving into Super Weird territory.)

(she says still seeming to be talking about the messy spiderweb that exists instead of a neat love triangle among the main characters, but actually watching Dean discover Suzy’s old porn DVDs)

* * *

While they’re getting on with that, I meant to mention these lines:

> JODY I needed something that made sense to me – you know, comfort, I guess.
> 
> SAM Yeah, I guess we’re all looking for that.
> 
> JODY Except those that got it.
> 
> [SAM looks puzzled.]
> 
> JODY Come on. You and Dean? That’s something special, don’t you think?
> 
> [SAM looks out the window and shrugs.]

Sam is finally beginning to express worry and concern over how Dean’s been towards him lately with what Sam doesn’t know is the Gadreel thing, just that obviously “comfort” is not what he’s getting from Dean while he’s acting this way. Considering this is also talking about romance or not in their lives, weirdly reminded of the “unicorn” talk with Meg, because Sam really does not get a whole lot of attention so there’s some pretty odd conversations to refer to but beggars can’t be choosers. :P That one summed up the whole Amelia thing for him with Meg’s surprise that Sam stopped and wanted more out of his life than just hunting, and obviously there’s the whole season 8 baggage of Sam eventually being forced to choose no to Amelia (which, again, 8x10, always the adios) for the sake of working with Dean, and going from independent and free in the hiatus time, to a self-sacrificing wreck by the end of the season, damage he’s still recovering from emotionally as much as Gadreel is quietly physically fixing him. If their comfort ultimately exists in finding balance and all that stuff Sam said in 11x04 while reflecting on what options were open to them in love, then of course the destructive parts of their relationship that caused them to implode into each other again over season 8 and exclude everyone including stuff like Cas getting sent away, obviously do not represent this comfort, and Sam seems to know that things can get wildly unhealthy between him and Dean just that he often doesn’t seem to know how to do anything about that – like their weird argument in 9x12 and 9x13 etc really not addressing what really needed to be addressed and both of them coming at it wrong so far as I remember. Eurgh, casually glancing ahead in canon is really inspiring me. :P

* * *

Dean has a dramatic picture of a pier onto a misty lake behind him when he hits on Suzy, which is a Thing associated with his love life – I mean, Cas. And Crowley in 9x17 I recall. Special shout out for 11x14 and actually going to visit a real dock just to mope about Cas and ships that slipped between his fingers :P

* * *

I’ve seen some good discussion out there of Dean being kind of scared of Suzy a little, and that they both end up flinging themselves at the other while in character in their various personas – Suzy has a line clearly distinguishing that she thinks Carmelita was a “horrible” girl and sees her as someone else other than herself, but slips back into character with Dean. And Dean I can and probably have at this point written novels on him vs personas. I guess Monster Movie is my favourite go-to for Dean and personas for a really obvious metaphor on how he does it and why, and has the bonus that he was hooking up with Jamie after realising he was still a virgin after being rebuilt after Hell.

> SUZY You’re not like… the other guys in town, are you? You’re kind of a… a bad boy.

The “bad boy” line of course since we’re immediately following on from the episode literally titled “bad boys” also carries connotations for Dean – in that case kind of the episode proving he was anything but bad, giving us a sweet glimpse of the probably surface viewer unexpected side of Dean being adorable and awkward and romantic as a teenager, and so Dean playing into being a “bad boy” is very much pandering to the surface level and retreating into that persona. While we’re on the subject of weirdass stuff with Bobby, very like the way Dean talked his way into the hook up with Lydia the Amazon

* * *

(why the “weirdass” stuff? dear god I hope the whole leaving the flask there thing was him leaving it respectfully in the other room on the off chance Bobby was haunting it since they hadn’t figured it out yet at that point in the season :P)

* * *

I still question how all these losers were stuck in the basement for like weeks or something and the new victim is the first one to find the lanterns.

This episode is poorly paced because 20 minutes in we suddenly get a load of stuff with the victims, possibly not to harsh the buzz for Dean’s ill-timed hook up, but then we have to have several scenes in short succession of the victims freaking out, Vesta stealing the pastor to eat, Sam and Jody finally freaking out about Dean probably getting kidnapped, and then immediately within minutes of Vesta being distracted with the pastor, kidnapping Suzy and Dean – if we just remembered there were people rotting underground sooner… :P

* * *

Oh now they got one lantern lit they’ve got all the candles for max ambience. Great use of resources, guys.

* * *

Dean being told he’s in Hell though. The show has a fair amount of criticism it forgets or doesn’t emphasise their past trauma very well, but Dean has a weird moment and then is like “Nah we’re totally not in Hell, I know exactly what Hell is like, and this ain’t it, which means this is something we can work with” and the next shot is him up the ladder working to free them from it.

(In the context of this season where he’s on his descent arc, this is one of many moments he ends up in Hell-adjacent looking places such as this, but he’s got the strength of will to escape and save everyone from it right now, and I’m guessing he has some trust that Sam will come along and find them :P)

* * *

> SUZY Dean. Maybe God wants us down here – because of what we did.
> 
> DEAN Trust me – this is not God’s work.

No, he seems reaaaally chill with premarital hanky panky :P

* * *

> SAM Listen, is there some kind of train station around here or something? I-I could have sworn I heard a whistle.

There’s a whole lot of meta about train sounds as a warning signal, especially for descent arc stuff but here Sam uses them to track down where Dean is with nerdily uncanny accuracy.

* * *

It’s on a farm again.

And Sam and Jody hastily work out all the details in a few seconds that they need to actually finish the episode, via various online research :P

Followed by a hasty scene of Jody punching a virgin to get blood (but it’s apparently okay because she was very annoying)

I’m just saying, this episode could have been a bit better balanced and maybe not so many catty issues with other women.

* * *

Anyway Sam and Jody explore the creepy abandoned barn, so we’re having a really good run with all that imagery.

This is a very agricultural season. I blame Cain.

* * *

> HONOR You broke, too, huh?
> 
> SUZY Guess I’m not as strong as I thought I was.
> 
> HONOR [laying her hand on SUZY’s] God forgives. You told me that yourself.

I also think it’s pretty messed up she feels bad about it but Dean never really has a reaction one way or the other afterwards as far as I remember? He’s immediately way too distracted to care. I can’t remember but I have a feeling I’ve complained before that he barely even says goodbye to her or anything after they’re all free? Meanwhile the girls who’ve been punished for breaking their vows feel lousy about what they did, despite the virgin-mocking going on >.>

* * *

> VESTA Actually, I figured if you can’t beat them, join them.

This is also kind of what happens to Dean. They didn’t close the gates of Hell, aka didn’t beat them, so in his attempts to follow the compromise solution of killing the baddies one by one instead, he ends up becoming one of them. Involuntarily, but whatever. :P

Right now he’s busy freeing them all from the Hell-like dungeon.

Also,

> VESTA They used to beg to stay pure for me. And now I have to drag them kicking and screaming. And they’re not even real virgins. They’re born-again. You want to talk about pathetic?
> 
> JODY Yeah. You’re a real charity case.
> 
> VESTA Oh, no, sweetheart. This isn’t charity. I take what I deserve.

I know she was a false lead for being a real problem, but this is very Abaddon, especially with a red-haired villain venting her anger about being forgotten and passed over for different higher powers, and so taking what she can. This goes very neatly with 9x17 and the Abaddon side of things with her having her personal soul-mining operation, taking what she can and not even going through the official channels of collecting them for/in Hell. Also, under cover as nuns, again dark forces infiltrating Christianity and taking from within.

> VESTA When those trollops are about to die soaked in their juicy fear, I…eat…their…livers! Because that’s the only part of them still working to purify the body that they’ve trashed. Now, normally, I like them weaker, but let’s just call this a hunter’s exception, shall we?

The liver imagery is really important: I think it goes back to Prometheus and of course he takes a detour through being a very strong Dean parallel over this arc. And Dean, of course, having his most alcoholic season to date while affected with the Mark, which gives him pretty intense alcohol processing powers to drink all that and not die immediately.

* * *

I like that at the end of the day Jody was still “pure” enough to kill Vesta, as her blood’s all over the weapon that does it. Like, just by being a really good person on her own terms (“I don’t make promises I can’t keep”)

It’s kind of like that whole thing with Dean killing the whore of Babylon in 99 Problems except Jody doesn’t have any mytharc connected to it, she just does it :P

* * *

Wait yeah we just say goodbye to Jody and then it’s Sam and Dean having a moment about the whole “I am clearly a zombie” “you’re not a zombie” conversation :P

> SAM Oh, it’s more than that. I mean, Vesta said I was practically dead inside.
> 
> DEAN Oh, and she’s in the circle of trust now?
> 
> SAM Why would she lie?

The good old “the bad guy gains nothing from making shit up” trust fall. C’mon Dean, I’m sure this is not at all applicable to you to remember in 3 episodes :P *Crowley hanging out in the wings waiting to swoop up his prize*

* * *

I mean technically he does tell Dean that Cain became a demon but.

* * *

Anyway Dean scratches around for any excuse, but

> SAM Why does it have to be something else? It’s always something else. We’re always scraping to find some other explanation when maybe it is… just me.
> 
> DEAN Oh, come on, Sam.
> 
> SAM I’m a mess, Dean. You know it. And sometimes, I feel like maybe I’m never gonna actually be all right.

Sam’s on a much deeper level of “I’m fucked up” and it’s kind of not fair this is in such a weird episode because I love this bit, and all of Sam in it, just for how it shows Sam thinks about himself and the way he carries the trauma of all the terrible stuff that’s happened to/because of them and internalised it as something that’s his fault. And I mean I’ve been talking about that for what feels like a couple of episodes now, between the stuff I was saying about Sam here, with him taking the pledge to heart (accidentally) but not really seeming to feel safe or deserving to have a love interest… Or last episode stuff about Mary dying in the fire comes abruptly back to Sam when trying to help Tiny Tim…

I mean if nothing else for a positive way to push it, it means it’s actually been expressed out loud by him, and Dean KNOWS – he says “I can’t let you put this on yourself” so when it comes to actually being sensitive to Sam’s problems (aka NOT how it went down in the purity group meeting) he can see when things have gone too far. Even just being told that Sam is still potentially gravely ill he decides to risk telling him… So one of the better bits of positive character development is immediately stopped before it gets out of the door by Gadreel jumping in to show how closely he’s monitoring their conversations and to prove he’s pretty much holding Sam hostage for his own protection right now…

Gadreel wins out, and stops Dean taking that risk, because he’s speaking directly to Dean’s fears about protecting Sam, so an instinct to reach out and tell Sam gets squashed down by actually making Dean THINK about the consequences of his actions. He ends up telling Sam “we’ll deal with it” implying that they can survive it together, that whole “you and me against the world” thing despite the fact “you” is currently plural and Sam has no idea.

* * *

Sam walks out the room at the end with his horrible old backpack over his shoulders, and Jared’s way too big for it now compared to season 1 Sam who at least LOOKED smol under the layers, but it still has the sort of effect of the whole backpack = kid thing, except he’s got those massive great shoulders and so it’s making him look like an overgrown kid, which I suppose is entirely the point with the way Dean’s forced to treat him now. You’ll be okay because I said so so have some faith in it, he says in an episode which has a pretty incomprehensible idea of what faith really is for people but at least for Sam vs the church group was treated as him seeing it kind of a joke


	9. 9x09

Or: 

(pt. 2 of 3)

or 4 if you count Metatron and TBH if the rule is “too good to die in a Buckleming episode” with “good” based on what the story deserved as much as the character… then yeah. :P 

* * *

Also at this point in canon maybe it’s pt 3, because poor LINDA Tran being unceremoniously announced to be dead off-screen in 8x19 (Buckleming) after they assassinated her character for good measure in 8x07, and until season 9 was like “wow that was a bad idea” and started dropping hints she was alive back in 9x02… you know what she counts just for emotional trauma and utter misuse of the character.

pt. 3 of 5

* * *

The cold open has always seemed kind of silly to me, but opening the transcript I see this is one of the “let Thomas J Wright wrangle a Buckleming script” episodes and I spent an alarming amount of time fangirling 11x21 for its direction, so today I come in peace. Mostly. :P

I like the misty aesthetic, which either they’ve been avoiding or the world has just got less misty since the early seasons, but it lends an extra amount of sort of liminal space feeling to the biker bar by making it so isolated, and I think looking at the angel war stuff as quite allegorical can really help un-rubbish the messy angel war plotline. 

This sort of thing of a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere is obviously a very established part of the show’s imagery, but places like The Roadhouse back in season 2 always felt very real (THOSE TOURISTS) - so much that visiting an actual allegorical version of it in Heaven, even the characters were still struck with the reallness of it. But by Carver era the main characters are passing into a strange sort of folk hero state where they live and die over and over in these empty places in the world - Dean dies in that abandoned factory this season, and in 10x23 tries to die in another middle-of-nowhere abandoned Mexican restaurant/bar. These sort of locations become more like stages on which the story is set.  The end of season 11 is  _incredibly_  staged when it comes to meeting places and choices of locations for meetings, both by the characters and the show.

Which of course brings me to Metatron. Since we know he’s hammering out drafts of the story right now, trying to control the angel war and shape it in his favour. Right now, it seems to be to kill off all the agitators and would-be-leaders so that no one can  _really_  challenge him or even just organise and settle the angels peacefully (he is freakishly successful at that, considering how terrible the angels are in later seasons), and even by the end of this episode the only potential agitators to Metatron left are Cas and Bartholomew (and I think Malachi dies off-screen somewhere between here and Captives? Cas doesn’t kill him but just gets the hell out of there at the end of the episode??) 

Anyway, the “Melody Ministry Glee Club” angels go in and implausibly manage to murder every single other one of the biker angels, without taking any losses of their own in the scrap, so I think they have a bit of “divine” providence on their side, in this way where we keep blaming the weird writing decisions this season on Metatron 

* * *

There’s probably something to say as well about the familiarity angels find in making factions in pre-made organised groups like church groups or biker groups, as it offers a sort of uniform or order more like the family/military structure they’re used to dealing with… who knows, maybe they discover picking on groups is a way to ensure better vessel not-blowing-up rates, if the pre-existing human structure works well with them, it sort of creates an understanding between the angel and host which gives them a bit more unity? idk like pheromones between already occupied vessels easing the possession for the next ones in the group

i am slightly feverish btw :P

* * *

> EZEKIEL-IN-SAM (stiffly)  
> I must say, Dean, I’m very uncomfortable with this whole trip. Investigating crimes involving angels – or anything involving angels – puts me, and therefore, Sam, at risk.
> 
> DEAN   
> Well, family business, Zeke.

wow that response is a mess, in 4 words. Family business? It always seems worse and worse when Dean pulls that card. :P It barely works on Sam anyway - “nothing says family like the whole family being dead” after all, and Dean was using it for emotional blackmail there too. I know he’s just trying to tell him it’s their job and it would be weird not to investigate something so obviously angel-related, but picking that exact phrase in THIS episode is major alarm bells.Especially as it’s sort of also implying “Zeke” is being dragged along on the family business, underlining his extremely uncomfortable not-family status. 

I guess also kind of positively implying angel drama IS family business, and they’re about to walk into Cas there on the exact same reason. And I mean, it would be family business because Cas is family, so it’s like, in-law business. :P

* * *

> DEAN   
> (pause) Wait, if you know where we’re going, that means you’ve been listening in. Are you – are you hearing everything between me and Sam?
> 
> EZEKIEL-IN-SAM  
> No. Just a word here and there. I have better things to do with my time than eavesdrop, like heal your brother. (pointedly)

Uh. He’s pretty much definitely been listening to  _everything_  except perhaps a few moments where he probably passed out and left Sam to deal with shit after resurrecting everyone Dean’s ever met. :P At this point considering most of his appearances have been interaction with Dean, you’d think Dean would be a bit more suspicious of what “Zeke” has been listening to. He’s certainly ready to leap in any time Dean says anything too sketchy.

* * *

Listen say what you want about Dabb and car continuity but

> SAM  
> That sign said “Fort Collins, 50 miles.”
> 
> DEAN  
> So?
> 
> SAM  
> So, last time I looked, like, 12 seconds ago, uh, Fort Collins was a hundred miles.

At this point I’m assuming Sam wanted to listen to some shit on the radio Dean didn’t agree with and he was like “driver picks the music shotgunispossessedbyanangel” and forced Gadreel to the surface and they kinda hung out for 50 miles until Dean was sure they’d left that weird local radio station in the dust.

* * *

> SAM (getting agitated)  
> No, it’s more than Vesta! I mean, this kind of thing’s been happening to me. Like, like, there are chunks of time just … missing. Like there are times when I’m… not here.

You know, unless Dean’s been using the above-mentioned tactic to get out of chores etc for weeks he really ought to be a LOT more concerned about how Gadreel is gobbling up Sam’s time like that. Legitimate warning sign that Sam’s in Trouble but Dean can’t listen to it >.>

> DEAN  
> Yeah, because … damn straight the trials. They whacked you, man. You’re not up to warp speed yet, okay? But you will be.   
> (Smiles at SAM.)   
> Would I lie? 

*cringes on his behalf* Word to the wise: don’t say this when you’re lying and rapidly losing control of the situation >.> You will only feel worse when this all swings around to smack you right in the face

* * *

Anyway they make it to the crime scene and my eyes drift to Dean’s hair

oh, honey.

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/128496368293/whats-your-favorite-wardrobe-based-headcanon-x>

* * *

There is a very bright and obvious Kingdom beer sign on the wall, which goes for Heaven and Cas stuff in particular. Further to the “family” business thing:

> COP  
> Ah, one of your guys is here already. 

just a nice moment of Cas being placed with them :3

* * *

Help, he and Dean are in the same frame again. I’m never good with this after they spend time apart. :P

* * *

Dean isn’t too good with it either. He is Not Pleased to see Cas here, because he was on thin ice with “Zeke” already over investigating angel stuff, he thought Cas was safely out of the job living a normal life (and Dean was really WORRIED about him in 9x06 as he came to realise Cas wasn’t coping too well…) and basically this is a mess of the worst scenario Dean can imagine for this, and he knows Cas may be the one to get hurt or suffer somehow from it. But he can’t force him to leave either.

* * *

*gently ruffles Cas’s hair* he’s so excited :’) He’s HELPING. AGENT CASTIEL IS ON THE JOB. 

(stop being such a bummer, Dean)

> CASTIEL  
> Um, I still have that badge you gave me. 

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/148144649699/karmaplus-cas-wants-a-badge>

I guess he went and found it some time before losing his wings? Or in 8x08 didn’t get it out in time but I think we have can have 2 completely contradictory bits of canon for their own sake >.> OR Dean made Cas a badge in 9x06 to get him onto the crime scene (or in fact keeps spares for Cas in the glove compartment along with the others, and accidentally treated Cas like it was Christmas when he casually tossed him one :P)

Anyway it calls back to 5x03 directly, which was a heck of a gay episode all things considered, and is still one of the most beautiful Cas n Dean working together episodes. It’s lovely that it’s being played as a good memory/nostalgic for Cas that he has a memento from that long ago (the trenchcoat survived until 9x01 after all if we assume it was remade with everything in the pockets, and we know Cas kept Jimmy’s wallet and driver’s licence or at least season 10 decides he did so conceivably it’s canon the contents of his pockets follow him from the start and 8x08 was just Cas with his head not in the game, rather than missing his badge, which would still fit with the reading of the episode)

* * *

Watching Dean struggle to keep on top of the lies to Cas is awful >.> Now Sam tells Cas finally what Dean told him was why Cas left, which Dean was worried about all the way back in 9x04, and he hastens to mention some other stuff to hopefully make Cas forget. This:

> DEAN (uncomfortable, interjects)   
> Yeah, and you were living the life, you know? Early retirement, working your way up the Gas-n-Sip ladder. 

probably wasn’t meant super deeply, but with all of 9x06′s subtext behind it, we have a repeat of Dean trying to cram that normal life on Cas in self-defence, the whole metaphor of living a banal human existence for heterosexuality vs … not doing that (see also: 9x07 queercoding the hunter lifestyle for Dean in contrast). Cas chooses the “family business” = gaaaay.

(I am still feverish)

* * *

(I am still not over Dean’s hair)

Fluffy! 

* * *

his tie is demon!Dean colours

* * *

Special mention for a beeeee-a-utiful Gadreel bitchface when he weighs in, as if Dean wasn’t suffering enough from being torn apart in 3 directions while being crushed under the weight of his own mistakes.

* * *

Why are the different angel factions both travelling in stretch limos?

Wait I’m trying to blame all the weird angel war stuff on Metatron

@ Metatron: explain this.

* * *

> MALACHI  
> Bartholomew’s naked grab for power was nothing but disrespect! (voice raises angrily) He and I ultimately want the same thing. The only way we can take Heaven back from Metatron is to unite. And if Bartholomew wants to avoid all-out warfare on Earth, he’ll meet personally with me to negotiate terms. 

Gosh, I sure hope Metatron doesn’t catch on that you’re trying to unite and do anything about it.

he probably got the stretch limo company to swing by and pick up both sides so they’d chat before Malachi could earn a meeting with Bartholomew and maybe not rush negotiations >.>

(but seriously, there’s a real symmetry to their arrival, and viewed through these pipes

they’re a sort of honeycomb, like all that meta about Why Bees when it comes to Cas, and going on about the structure of Heaven. The fact they arrive so similarly shows their connectedness, but also how they’re 2 factions being played against each other who should have a common cause before they even say anything)

I was kind of joking that Metatron goes through a lot of different scripts in this episode, but TBH everything seems to be going to plan since the last couple of times he had to seriously recalculate, as the angels are being exactly as chaotic and self-destructive as he could have hoped. It’s the main characters only who don’t play into his hands, and this is the episode he reaches out to Gadreel… what’s just happened? Cas has put himself back on the chessboard despite the magnificent move played earlier to take him off of it, also delivered through Gadreel. Now Metatron has to act, and so the third(?) draft begins, even as he leaves the lesser angels to scrap, to take the “interesting” ones and play them against each other. Pawns vs at the very least Cas and Gadreel as rooks or knights. 

* * *

> MALACHI  
> I called for a top-level summit. I don’t deal with hand maidens. 

Also: rude. :P

Weird use of handmaiden. Just because it has Dean connotations. Did they even remember that? keeping track of quirky shit from Robbie episodes is probably not a top priority. :P

* * *

I find it ridiculous how TFW can sit at a table and all supposedly be the same distance apart but Cas is still blatantly next to Dean in a way he isn’t to Sam. :P

* * *

I also forget how INTO Dean Cas is in this scene. 

Chill, you have unaccounted for time later in this sequence to go hook up while Gadreel is off chatting with Metatron. You can attempt to seduce Dean while I don’t have to watch it and suffer >.>

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Hey, you once told me that you don’t choose what you do. It chooses you.
> 
> DEAN  
> Huh?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I’m a part of this. (clinks beer bottles with DEAN) Like it or not.

I just find it so sad that Cas says “like it or not” and asking if it’s even okay for him to be there, because Dean is pushing him away so hard and having to try and reject him at every turn (and talk over Sam who has no idea wtf is going on between them so he has to assume by now this is a Couple Fight Thing he’s stuck in the middle of) because this isn’t even new - like Gadreel seems to metaphorically represent Sam’s expressed anxiety about Cas supplanting him in 8x23, he drives a wedge between Dean n Cas which resonates strongly with their 8x22 fight; Dean’s abandonment issues and lashing out at Cas over all his hurt from the Crypt Scene, which all goes towards Cas’s endless feelings of not being wanted or only being useful as a tool… 

At this point he’s basically giving Dean the “we’re 2 hunters working the same case so fuck you we’re working together” speech from many episodes where they trip over “rival” hunters. His “don’t quote me to me” use of Dean’s words also resonates with what Dean said in the start of the episode to Gadreel about the family business and how they had to investigate it, so there’s like a double bind there where this isn’t just his own words to Cas whenever he said this haunting him, but his own self from like a couple of hours ago too, so the sentiment is freshly expressed and gives him no room to wiggle around it. :P

* * *

The dialogue here kinda repeats some of the stuff from the crime scene and I just gave myself déjà vu from not remembering my feverish notes from last night, trying to write about

> DEAN (looks alarmed at this turn of the conversation)   
> You know, Cas, are you sure you’re ready to jump back into all this? I mean, it seemed to me like you’d actually found some peace.

With the exact same point I made about

> DEAN (uncomfortable, interjects)   
> Yeah, and you were living the life, you know? Early retirement, working your way up the Gas-n-Sip ladder.

So I would like to accuse Buckleming of making their episodes inaccessible to the chronically delirious :P

* * *

Anyway it gets them back on the subject of the angel factions via the exact same journey of the conversation but now at the bar instead of the crime scene, so I suppose that was a good use of our time.

Also a good use of our time: Dean and Cas talking about 9x03 >.>

I have to believe for my own sanity the meta about there about how they’re snarking back and forth and Cas is rolling his eyes like “wow yes look how hetero we are talking about how hot women are” and that his reminder first that Dean killed her and then that she tortured him is a “REALLY. We’re ACTUALLY having this conversation?” while also playing heterosexual chicken

Weirdly, despite Buckleming’s rabid attempts to make Cas objectify women in 9x03 and 9x06, it’s them who offer a good counter moment of him rolling his eyes [at all this](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/131888544877/patrcolvs-misha-100-percent-plays-cas-as-ace)

(dir. Jensen Ackles, who is one of the better Buckleming wranglers in the grand scale so who knows where this all came from, them or him and Misha being like “…..”  :P)

Anyway this scene seemed to be borderline unsalvageable even by a decent director but just looking at the dialogue flat in the transcript is enough to make me weep in relief for the delivery doing literally anything with it other than whole-heartedly bro-ing it up. >.>

*focuses hard on Dean’s over-styled hair and dumb little smile* 

* * *

anyway the best part of this scene is they both lose their game of heterosexual chicken, Sam can not believe what he is seeing, and tries to escape being stuck at the table with them before it gets any more painful to watch them being hopelessly in love with each other while resenting and repressing it with every fibre of their being :P 

* * *

Also Gadreel can not believe what he is seeing, but in an angry, serious way ruining all their fun. I am pretty sure that’s El Sol advertising right behind Dean when the camera angles switch from TFW date night to the confrontation camera angles, but not visibly labelled and I don’t think there’s El Sol lights in here.

El Sol has plenty of connotations about deception and so on, which makes sense for any Gadreel interaction, but the way he pops up right when Dean is laughing about how adorable Cas is, makes me think of all I’ve written about Lisa and Carmen over the last year, and how Dean could very well have been deceiving himself over having this happy family moment with Cas, especially when with no lights, I’m going off the style of the advertisement, which was most clear in 2x20, making human!Cas Dean’s 3rd El Sol love interest.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Oh, boy.
> 
> GADREKE  
> Well? What are you going to do about this?
> 
> DEAN  
> About Cas?
> 
> GADREKE  
> He is a beacon, Dean, pulling every angel for miles down on our heads.
> 
> DEAN  
> All right, you know what, Zeke? Level with me. What is it that you’re so afraid of?

I wonder if Dean is starting to think Gadreel has it in for Cas despite his assurances at the beginning of the season. The fact Cas is warded makes his excuses ridiculous, and honestly I’m just remembering season 11 where God is like “Amara is waaaarded I can’t fiiiind heeeer”

(“oh no wait it doesn’t serve me to say that any more hey look she’s over there”)

* * *

I find it interesting with 9x10’s hindsight on Gadreel’s character which  _strongly_  queer codes him, if not outright just telling us he and Abner were a thing and it’s up to you not to take it as a joke (spoiler alert: I don’t take it as a joke and I don’t think Dabb intended it as one given the context), that he has this sort of thing where he’s resisting spending time with his “family” from fear of being discovered and identified, or “outed” (again, and why is this like the 3rd or 4th time I’ve referenced this episode for various things already, but Thinman has Ed or Harry also heavily stressing “outing” for revealing a true identity, in this case, Not FBI (yes, me and my Thing with Dean and his FBI persona is waiting to pounce on that episode, which may be the 2nd gayest this season after 9x06 :P) so there’s that parallel)… Since Gadreel’s characterisation and fear about this is delivered over multiple episodes, and not just a Buckleming invention but goes right back to 9x01 and Carver putting this in here, I feel pretty secure in this reading (also: Gadreel is super gay, thanks Dabb)…

Anyway we know Cas can still identify angels and presumably if he’s got the exact same skillset as Anna did when she was human (we know he can hear angel radio still) he may be able to see true faces etc, so Gadreel is in a definitely dangerous position of being caught out just by being in the same space as Cas for too long… 

BUT this is something that happens because of his fear and lack of trust (I mean… Cas does get reeeally upset when he finds out who it is, so, justified) – if he had been able to allow Dean to tell Cas on the condition it was still a secret from Sam, and NOT sent Cas away, then whatever cues may have “outed” him to Cas may have been easier to smooth over, or perhaps he could have even revealed he was Gadreel in a less awful scenario, so Cas wouldn’t have attacked him for it. But Gadreel is rightly scared that his family hates him for who he is, and that his true identity is literally dangerous to him that some would kill him or hurt him on principle based on the stories they’ve been told that scapegoat him as the villain.

* * *

Whiiiich of course all adds up to:

> METATRON  
> Oh, please. I know who you really are. And it isn’t Ezekiel.

[…]

> METATRON  
> Relax. I’m not here to out you.

Welp, he has literally no chance of not being manipulated here.

* * *

(Oh hey, it IS El Sol behind Dean. Self five!)

Cas is Dean’s El Sol love interest, confirmed.

This is right as Cas says:

> CASTIEL  
> (clears throat) I, um, I noticed you look… kind of uncomfortable whenever Sam mentions my leaving. Doesn’t he know that you told me to leave?

So that’s twice that the visibility of the El Sol thing is linked to Gadreel disrupting the DeanCas stuff.

Also, Cas isn’t stupid, he’s been working this one over probably since wondering why Dean came to Idaho without Sam but definitely since the biker bar when they first met and Dean first got weird about it. Really, this is just the first moment he has alone with Dean without Sam there so he can actually ask him because he CAN be tactful when it’s life or death.

Dean folds and explains to Cas in as many words as he can that he’s done fucked up:

> DEAN   
> Look, I got to do anything I can to get him back.

Given the whole point of this conversation was to prove Cas isn’t stupid and can read Dean well (and would understand this about Sam when it comes to Dean), I think he gets it at this point that Dean has done something Really Stupid, but he’s not going to push, and he gets the not-apology that Dean is sort of owning up to it and making the direct link between his actions saving Sam to having to push Cas away, rather than making it all mysterious and Cas’s fault or some personal vendetta against Cas or something etc:

> DEAN   
> Now, if that means that we keep our distance from you for a little while, then… Then I don’t have a choice. I don’t feel good about it, but I don’t have a choice. It’s great to have your help, Cas. Okay, but we just can’t work together.

(not that I’m saying Cas is magically cool with this, the next thing in the transcript is just “Cas looks sad” which is officially the worst stage direction I’ve seen in them :P In the here and now Cas is kind of just taking another sad emotional kicking and I think the next time we see him he goes off and prays for guidance? BUT, when this DOES go pear-shaped on Dean, this tortured non-apology basically was just used to show Dean in a huge amount of obvious emotional pain to Cas, to show him that Dean is in trouble, and so when the plot swings around and Cas finds out that Dean and Sam are in physical danger from whatever’s going on, he rushes to help, and in 9x10 is utterly forgiving and supportive of Dean being “stupid for the right reasons”… Not to diminish Cas’s pain over the whole thing, but I guess whatever we think, Cas himself doesn’t feel so wronged he can’t get past it and help Dean. 

I think it’s a world of difference between Dean doing this and doing NOTHING at all and yet expecting Cas to still help him. And as I said, Cas loves Dean unconditionally even while he’s being a fuckhead in the bar scene earlier so I think he can cope with the “invited a strange angel to possess his brother” revelation. :P (eurgh I’m in too much pain to be serious about this sorry :P)

Basically Dean earns himself maybe half an emotional brownie point here and Cas, well of love and forgiveness that he is, has been reassured that he’s not to blame and that Dean does want to be with him and can’t… Possibly the closest to the surface the conflict between Cas and Sam for Dean’s affection ever comes for Cas? Who is normally 1000% cool with Sam and not upset about Dean spending so much emotional energy on him because he understands – he understands Dean better than anyone, met him because Dean sold his soul for Sam, he  _gets_ it – so something THIS drastic of making Cas this vulnerable and then having a Sam-related cause to exile him, is as close to forcing this tension between them as the show gets on the side of upsetting Cas.

* * *

There’s also this:

> DEAN  
> Then I don’t have a choice. I don’t feel good about it, but I don’t have a choice. 

Which fits right into the extremely frustrating theme of “I did what I had to do” which is the catchphrase of the season. Since we know Dean is being emotionally coerced by Gadreel, his professed lack of choice is part of sort of his tragedy of the season – the champion of free will barrelling into all these terrible decisions which he feels aren’t choices at all, and so this firmly ties his rejection (and therefore need) of Cas into part of the wider downfall arc. Next episode of course ends with Dean walking away from Sam and by extension leaving behind Cas, who was painted as his support very strongly in the episode (leaving him to look after Sam, really), and so these two things are the pillars under the claim that the narrative keeps Cas away from Dean specifically while he’s in his descent arc, by showing how intrinsically he’s tied to it all and Dean’s mindset.

* * *

(I’m glad Cas has self-reflecting scenes alone coming up because this is all hideous Dean-centric no matter how I try to wrangle it about Cas and it’s making me feel bad as a Cas!girl :P)

* * *

Over on the other side of the story I swear I saw something about a fan deducing like, between ad breaks, that this was Gadreel because of the “fig worm” graffiti on the wall. I like how the “WORM” stays in shot right next to Metatron’s face as he gets to work on his best emotional blackmail of the year. Because he’s not being just as slimy and manipulative or anything

> METATRON  
> It broke His heart to lock you away, you know? You were God’s most trusted. That’s why He chose you to protect the garden. Your one task was to keep evil from entering… from befouling His cherished creation, mankind, and you failed Him!

Being that much more sympathetic to Metatron these days (/sarcastically: thanks, Robbie), 11x20 puts Metatron’s love of God into a clearer light that this rings very true with – if Metatron believes Gadreel is guilty then he sees that as personally offensive to God, in his sycophantic way where he’s much more concerned with his boss’s feelings apparently. Even if it means scapegoating Gadreel because someone had to be punished for this

(Also Heaven sounds like a right popularity contest – Metatron feels like he was special to God for being picked on to be his scribe. He describes Gadreel as “most trusted” and then season 11 pits Cas and Lucifer against each other to be the “favourite”, never mind going back further to the apocalypse with the other archangels plus Lucifer again and their issues with God)

* * *

I like how Gadreel has the Bison Bud’s sign behind him as a sort of red and gold halo. (I… picked on red and gold earlier… um… oh Christ, Robin’s slushie machine vs Cas’s one… I give up, colour symbolism is really not my forte, at least not when I’m being physically attacked by my chronic pain >.>)

* * *

> NOT-EZEKIEL-IN-SAM  
> They say he is a good, and … honorable angel.

(okay I was copy-pasting this to comment on how Gadreel sees himself, but the wiki’s dedication to spoiler-free captioning is deeply amusing me about “Not-Ezekiel-in-Sam”)

Gadreel makes it ambiguous if he sees himself as evil and dishonourable, or if this is just how Heaven sees him – I think even if he refutes the actions:

> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> Not my doing.

something about being punished for being evil and dishonourable for SO LONG has broken Gadreel a bit. He wants to reclaim his honour and that’s how Metatron manipulates him, but to do so he will kill for Metatron, even up to targets like Abner or hundreds of random angels who were causing no harm, as it takes him a long time to have a crisis of conscience, and realise that he’s been doing more and more stuff that’s evil and dishonourable (and Metatron is considerably worse) and that he’s chosen the wrong path.

* * *

Also:

> METATRON  
> Your one task was to keep evil from entering… from befouling His cherished creation, mankind, and you failed Him!

I feel like keeping track of Metatron vs humanity is a thing :P Or in this case, Gadreel loves humanity (in the platonic ways vs all the eyebrow wiggling when we say that about Cas)… Metatron is pretty snooty about the angels who love humanity more than God or being an angel or whatever it is he values so much aside from himself, or bad writing advice:

> METATRON  
> Someone had to be blamed.

Of course that’s the sort of thinking of constructing a narrative which is also a big part of trying to make Lucifer more sympathetic in season 11, talking in a few episodes about how he was built up as the villain just to make God look good, all A+ writing tips Metatron employs in season 9 vs Cas and, like, every other angel. :P

Metatron himself has a kind of self-serving appreciation of humanity – he enjoys the stories but doesn’t like people, and uses Humanity and Gadreel’s guilt about that to manipulate him here, and then in 9x23 is going around trying to make himself look like the champion of humanity with all his Marv miracle healing, but again, entirely for its own ends and visibly causing moral and emotional harm to the humans around him even if he physically helps them. You know, bringing a bit more evil into the world and all

* * *

(and never mind the discussion of the corruption of humanity, when Dean “humanity” Winchester is going to be corrupted by the end of the season, again, connected fairly directly to Lucifer going around fucking stuff up for everyone :P)

* * *

Also I just find it interesting that Metatron picks on Gadreel for his choice of a “main character” or protagonist. He sees himself as the author-god, so he needs characters, and he picks Gadreel and Cas as his main characters, one the “protagonist” seeking redemption, and one the “villain” but of course they actually have a lot in common – this is basically Metatron’s recruitment pitch to Cas in 8x22 playing off Cas’s own need for redemption, knowing that Gadreel can be manipulated in exactly the same way. Cas as usual is several steps ahead of all the other angels, so in this case is in a “once burned” situation with Metatron… Even though Metatron owns up to causing the fall, obviously he doesn’t share that he betrayed his last helper to get there. And despite attempting to stack the chessboard in his favour and play Cas and Gadreel against each other – and they have good motivation in the middle part of the season while they don’t understand each other – 9x18 breaks things down a bit and things aren’t the black and white Metatron wanted to write them in, and so Cas and Gadreel start meeting and eventually end up working together with an identical common cause and their similarities become their strength in that respect.

Anyway at this moment and time Metatron’s choice of protagonist is interesting just because of how irredeemable he seems – probably to Metatron what makes him so pliable to use for his own purposes, trapping him in that same “I did what I had to do” that Dean’s stuck in – and hoping that he’s so terrible he’ll always be on that first step of the story, yearning for a redemption Metatron has no intention to actually give him. But in the end, Gadreel does find redemption and completes his character arc. I’d say no thanks to Metatron, but I think it’s another of those cases where he sets up his characters and they surprise him. He just wants Gadreel to be hired muscle, but the way in which he recruits him sets him up on the story, and the story always goes out of control for Metatron, so Gadreel isn’t *just* manipulated, but actually has his story play out because the desire of the story to happen trumps the will of the one controlling it.

* * *

Knowing that Dean is a lying liar who lies when it comes to stuff about Cas, I’m suspicious on principle that Cas just up and left like he says to Sam, after a huge time skip that gets them home to the Bunker and so on. I mean for one thing they had a load of spare time while Gadreel and Metatron were hanging out.

(I think this may still be Gadreel tbh since Sam would be missing such a chunk of time like why not just make off with him now, and play it by ear for a chance to leave from here on out :P)

Anyway one more angsty DeanCas fanfiction gap for the road.

> DEAN  
> It’s the way he wanted it, honestly.

>.>

Yeah basically he undermines anything he says about Cas to Gadreel/Sam. We know Cas doesn’t “take off” because he stays right where he is, trying to help, and it’s Dean who backs off the case and goes home.

I wonder if Dean said he could keep working the case and dragged Sam back to the Bunker (again, Sam being made to stay in the Bunker by Dean before Gadreel does the same to him mentally) to sort of support Cas from afar – if Cas was determined to stay on the job and Dean knew it, he could send him info like their internet research – since they’re still on the case despite going home, when it would make a lot more sense to NOT leave Wyoming and head all the way back to Kansas if they’re still investigating the deaths. Dean had to have hustled Sam out of there really quickly, but Sam’s not done thinking about the case yet. Dean… is just trying to balance everything.

> DEAN  
> Hey, look, man, he’s been all over the map since he got his wings clipped. 

… Kinda feel like Dean is talking about himself here, since he HAS, but Cas has been pretty consistent, and all his “leaving” and “running away” is “being told to go” and Dean leaving him behind.

This is one hell of jumbled thought and I apologise. >.> This episode is jumbled. Your face is jumbled.

* * *

However the shot of Metatron and Gadreel which proves he’s literally half Sam’s size is amazing and perfect.

This exchange they start with seems somehow off but also something that the show plays with a lot with angels:

> METATRON  
> Frankly, I never got used to them. I lived among them for centuries. I had to isolate myself to keep sane.
> 
> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> Humans do seem chaotic, Metatron.
> 
> METATRON  
> Which makes them fascinating, but… All that emotion. Geez. And the wasted energy. It’s just… exhausting.

It’s leading into commentary on Sam and Dean, and angels being skeeved out by human emotion is something that comes up with Hannah – some angels seem to enjoy it, like Anna way back when, and some of the more fun angels, but with ALL the angels being forced to come to earth, some rub the wrong way with all this.

Still, specifically Metatron and Gadreel feel weird to be having this conversation. Perhaps it’s just because this dialogue doesn’t go deep enough. Gadreel is messy and emotional himself, considering he’s being emotionally manipulated now, has spent most of the start of the season reacting in fear, and we’re going to find out next episode he’s one of the angels who has experienced love in the past… And that’s not getting to the PTSD and guilt, shame, etc. he resonates strongly with Sam and Dean, so if he’s reacting to them:

> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> I know. Sam Winchester… It is a mess in here. And the brother – I do not know where to start.

He should maybe have come across more personally victimised by having to endure front row seats, at least? :P Some of the stuff he’s learned about Sam over the last 8 episodes would be directly triggering to him as he shares a traumatic backstory – tbh with ALL of TFW in one way or another. (And with Cain as another person fucked up by Lucifer in the first chapter of the Bible, who Dean then ends up sharing a story with so this resonance goes on and on, since Gadreel is a key character to the season)… So I think this dialogue casts him too much as an outside observer to what he’s really experiencing… And we KNOW he’s been affected by Sam and vice versa from earlier episodes, such as the last dialogue in 9x02.

Meanwhile Metatron IS an outside observer, but his whole thing is being so obsessed with stories, he at least thinks of himself as an expert on human shit (“find a wife, tell me your story”) so it doesn’t make sense at ALL for him to isolate himself from humanity out of disgust. He’s got a weird casual fan view of it, which episodes like 10x18 or 11x06 show he’s woefully shit at being actually human and it doesn’t live up to expectations at all, but he’s certainly not AFRAID of people. He’s explicitly said he was hiding from the archangels and he’s been reading books out of a love of these little mini works of creation, so retconning his hiding as just isolating himself to avoid humanity is completely wrong. He’d probably actually be much nicer if he’d not gone into hiding and got so bitter and twisted and so on, but… eh. This feels like Buckleming can’t imagine a recluse being anything other than antisocial and misses the whole point of his love-hate for humanity as the ugly half-siblings that inherited all the brains from their parent, the one quality Metatron values in them because Chuck was a storyteller too, and his whole jealous imitation of God stemming from that.

* * *

*throws popcorn*

* * *

He could just be manipulating Gadreel by agreeing with him, of course. He’s lying about a lot of stuff but this is just presented as character building >.>

* * *

(This is presumably The Next Day from the first 15 minutes of the episode, then the random angel slaughter at night time, then Gadreel and Metatron meet again in the daytime, and we still haven’t caught up with Cas.) 

* * *

So here’s Cas presumably later that day, or two days since the bar, by my count. Which means he’s been hanging out in town investigating. Or pining. Or something. Who even knows. Maybe Dean gave him some money and sent him to a spa to chillax for a bit because he felt bad.

* * *

I feel like tons must have been written on Cas’s prayer here (It’s Buckleming vs faith again, which is a good thing because they must be seriously lapsed Catholics or something, they’re really into this kind of thing :P) Cas tries a variety of positions and attempts to reach out all that he knows humans do when they’re trying to express faith (since he’s been watching them do it since ever) but doesn’t know how to make that final step himself. The whole metaphor with the TV not being plugged in (and Cas and TV again!) He’s also not praying out of faith, or trying to reach all the way up, but doing this as a strategic thing to get the attention of a hopefully friendly angel but he knows being summoned by prayer from the other direction, and what it’s like for Dean or Sam to reach out to him – always with a bit more faith in Cas even if they’re being just as strategic. It’s obviously he feels that just putting his hands together and  _asking_  isn’t enough or the same as when he’s had prayers sent his way.

> I don’t know how humans do it.

(and these are the same writers who gave us the mechanics for the longing retcon and I weirdly trust them on their own worldbuilding continuity even if they sometimes are a bit wonky to everyone else :P)

* * *

Anyway Muriel answers and immediately flips out about helping Cas, he does that pure happy “yay angels” smile that kills me every time and then she ends up killed for helping him later in the episode, so that’s all awful.

* * *

Dean has found time to change into his maroon shirt showing this is definitely Day 3 since the bar, I guess.

(At this point I’m just curious if he and Cas actually line up)

He goes through so many wardrobe changes it’s hard to say what’s significant or not but that red shirt never means well :P

* * *

> KEVIN  
> This part is nearly indecipherable. Almost like, when Metatron wrote it down, he wanted to keep the words hidden, even from Prophets.

The angel tablet is ridiculous

I kind of feel like Metatron never intended anyone but himself to read it :P I mean compare to the Leviathan tablet and how easy Kevin found that to read, or how when he had an unbroken demon tablet he could skim read at least the table of contents.

Anyway that’s obviously a justification for the “no new prophets” thing even if I don’t think it’s explained until much further down the line?

* * *

Cas is full on puppy dog eyes with Muriel. He’s both very cute and very clever in this scene and I think he’s kind of playing into being harmless deliberately. Because even as a human, Cas knows he can fuck shit up if he tries really hard, and if nothing else he can pass on the info to two friends who are even better at fucking shit up :P He moves from cute to intense a bit too quickly for the cute part to have been totally genuine.

He’s a sneaky fuck this episode and I love him.

* * *

Ooh right okay it’s like *bam kidnapped by Malachai* but then cuts straight to the scenes with Cas and him, which explains why I have a huge freaking gap in my memory about what is between Cas at the motel and Cas being tortured.

* * *

The caged halo lights are in the horrible hallway leading to the torture room. I find it especially ironic whenever they’re cracked out around angels

I also find it essentially pointless to report on all the angel war faction nonsense, but this episode has included a repeat of the warning that the angel fall spell is irreversible, and now Cas is saying he has no power to undo it, so again, you can see why I spent all of season 9 and half of season 10 eyeballing this excitedly in case it came to anything.

(instead it seems mostly to be punishing Cas with the reminders of it and creating discord among the angels, which again because Cas is our sympathetic point of contact to this side of the story, just upsets him more >.>)

* * *

There’s a gifset I remember from long ago about all the angels talking about Cas…

> MALACHI  
> Ohhh. A dupe. The great Castiel. Valued and trusted Castiel. Top-of-the-Christmas-tree Castiel. No more than a dupe. (pause) 

They all certainly value his skill and importance to the point where it’s actually a hindrance to him being THIS vulnerable because Malachi can’t believe that Cas can be innocent, as Heaven misses his emotional journey and just gets to see him whenever he’s in full fucking shit up mode. Cas sort of has a legend that goes way beyond his actual self, since the angels have been fascinated by him since his resurrections, and the general horrified-yet-fascinated way the angels talk about him. The ones who know him better know him as a military leader, or rarely these days as a former friend. Muriel has had to introduce herself, and Malachi is working off of Cas’s reputation. Bartholomew when he reaches out to Cas later in the season goes off reputation and experience of fighting with him and the Rit Zien knew him pretty much just by reputation…

I think it’s necessary to point out all of this, because what Cas ends up doing in this episode is what probably causes an urgent redraft for Metatron, when his characters yet again don’t do as they’re supposed to, which leads to him casting Cas as his villain, and of course as I was saying, he picks his protagonist this episode and sets him on his path of redemption, kind of accidentally for where Gadreel really ends up. Cas making his urgent terrible decision to become a sort of grace vampire plus this frightening reputation he has, if we assume Metatron’s writing mostly for the audience of other angels, and keeping the story mostly between them rather than shaping the  _whole_  season (e.g. he does not care a jot about Abaddon, Crowley, the Mark of Cain, any of it) kind of makes a lot of sense of how Metatron can cast him this way – it might seem weird to us that our fluffy friendly harmless Cas, who in the way he relates to the Winchesters has mellowed completely now to the familiar way he is in the majority of Carver era, can be used as a villain, but to the angels he’s more dangerous and terrifying than any of these other pretenders to the throne.

* * *

Wait Muriel’s name badge says Muriel. Did she possess a vessel with her name for compatibility reasons or did she just use that name? This seems… wrong. *squints*

How do angels even work anyway

* * *

Is Castiel your real name?

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Angels butchering angels. Is this what we’ve become?
> 
> MALACHI  
> Just following your example, Castiel.

Nooooooooo

I hate how every 3 Cas episodes practically he gets all maudlin about killing angels, and yet it just keeps on happening. Again, all this stuff about leading by example goes well into this weird “Cas as the villain” thing where he’s not  _actually_ , not from our perspective, or the story’s perspective, but from the story Metatron is writing, and from the angels, it’s like only someone who goes by “the anarchist” would be impressed by Cas’s recent history. This is probably one of the most spirit crushing things Cas could hear >.>

* * *

Fortunately Malachi immediately lists a few dead angels, including Ezekiel, and Cas has something else to do with his life other than hang out here.

I mean, first he asks for Theo to just kill him, because see above, maudlin. Despite the fact we know he’s a sneaky fuck, and Buckleming clearly know he is because they then write him being one, Cas takes a pretty long time to work out he has an advantage here, possibly because despite how in the wider shape of the season from Metatron’s POV (see above, right at the top of this rewatch, me saying it’s a headcanon to unfuck the season courtesy of Robbie in 9x18 so I have no idea how much power it truly has down here :P)  they don’t seem to want to write him in a way which ACTUALLY is any more morally ambiguous in his behaviour than what we get with another “did what I had to do” that he’s handed on a platter with Theo’s greed and stupidity – if he stone cold manipulated and killed Theo for his grace from the instant they’re left alone, it plays much more into how the angels see Cas, and perhaps a season 4-6 version of Cas would have done it (Malachi has no reason to assume Cas DIDN’T since he trusts Theo apparently). But a season 7 onwards Cas is more broken, and a season 9 onwards Cas is  _softened_ , and so this is maybe the first demonstration of a real shift in his characterisation right here? Like, in previous episodes he hasn’t really had a chance to do much but react and his more fragile, vulnerable characterisation is very circumstantial… This is a much more proactive move here, especially the choice to steal grace rather than just kill Theo, and leg it as a human and hope for the best. And obviously he’s probably like 90% fluff with Dean in 9x10 and Sam in 9x11, and by the time we see him back in action in the later parts of the season this characterisation has sort of settled. I dunno, I probably shouldn’t be divining Cas’s intended characterisation from Buckleming episodes, but they at the very least usually reveal the attitudes, themes, etc that they’ve been told to write to, because they’re always so anvil heavy in their approach.

I’m pretty sure everyone would still have been rooting for Cas and cheering the roof off if he did stone cold manipulate Theo :P

* * *

The camera angle is obsessive about getting that caged halo over Theo

Oh you poor doomed asshole :P That plus Cas using his sneaky fuck voice on you aaaand

* * *

… I’m not at all sorry for you Theo you unlocked him you brought this on yourself.

* * *

It is wrong how hot scary sexy grace vampire Cas is.

There are probably better places to discuss Cas’s decision, but after 10x03 there was a little discussion about Adina and Theo maybe affecting Cas… I think it’s more like they sort of represent what he wants/needs at the time:

> CASTIEL  
> You’re clever, Theo.
> 
> […]
> 
> CASTIEL  
> And he could use a skilled soldier like yourself. 

Even if he’s a torturer for a really unbalanced angel, he has ruthlessness and skills necessary when Cas knows he’s stepping back into the game for real and has to go to war. Even if he has no plan about what to do, he has to get involved again, and after helping with the Winchesters and their personal drama, when we next see him deciding where to go next in Captives, he’s already on the edges of the war looking in, even if takes 9x18 to really convince him to fight. It’s a sort of inevitable pull all season.

Meanwhile Adina just wanted peace, and speaks to Cas’s weariness and desire to end conflict and live happily but he still isn’t doing stuff for himself – at the end of that episode, knowing he still has limited time on stolen grace, he goes back onto the road with Hannah to carry on that pointless mission to restore Heaven, before really seeming to have severed ties in 10x17 when he makes yet another choice in favour of the Winchesters, and then can go on the mission to get his own grace back as he achieved enough self-determination points to unlock that >.>

* * *

I mean in the here and now his thing is I suppose much more about escaping to warn Dean than it is about how he relates to Heaven, but doing this does kind of count as another picking the Winchesters over Heaven thing, and of course no matter how shitty Theo was, killing angels when he hates doing that and right after SAYING so, for the sake of warning Dean.

* * *

(I mean say what you like about Buckleming pacing, but because there’s no room for it anywhere else we get this entire uninterrupted bit about Cas before going back to Dean in his 4th or 5th outfit)

* * *

Dean is wandering through the Bunker with his phone out and I know this is years ago but maybe he’s playing Pokemon Go.

* * *

I hope Kevin is not eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because that is a sign of doom now

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> I… I did what I had to. 

*sighs loudly at the screen*

* * *

I will never be over how Dean n Cas manage to make each other laugh at stupid times like this when everything is terrible

*smushes them together and tries to make them just be married already*

This season is practically all them on the phone with each other.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> I’m not sure. But I am an angel.
> 
> DEAN  
> And you’re okay with that?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> If we’re going to war, I need to be ready.
> 
> DEAN  
> (pause)  
> Cas.

Aaaaaaaaah What was he going to SAY after “Cas” why did Cas interrupt hiiim

Still, “and you’re okay with that?” is one of the most loaded questions, and the answer Cas gives is completely unsatisfactory, only referencing what they need right now vs anything about what Cas actually wants. Cas’s season is all leading to “I just want to be an angel” but even that is bitter and based around knowing that Dean is dead, severing his strongest link to humanity and therefore desire to be anything other than an angel.

Dean sounds worried and like he might question Cas deeper or at the least say something heartfelt, but Cas moves onto the “I have bad news and worse news” part of the update.

* * *

He freakin is eating PB&J as well

Also you mistakenly think your mom is dead so I am your mom now: eat your crusts.

 And maybe go for a long walk and forget to come back to the Bunker :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> Why? Kevin, we’ve got tons of possessed humans out there. You with me? And when the angels kill each other off, the humans are taking it in the teeth. So what if I wanted to clue the human in so that he, or she, could spit the angel out? That would be a good thing, right?

It’s a shame you literally never apply this any other time – you have exorcisms, but it seems like the dodgy consent of vessels can never be re-negotiated?

I guess tbh Sam and Dean rarely actually have any problems with angels any more, usually something that happens over on Cas’s side. Lucifer in Cas might actually be the first time they had any issues with angels who weren’t Metatron (who has been in the same meatsuit for potentially a few thousand years so who knows what state he’s in) and is actually even remotely in the position to be wrangled like that by them?

* * *

I may be forgetting something but the longer I sit here putting off Kevin’s death by staring into the middle distance, the less sure I am Sam and Dean have actually fought ANY random angels since 9x01/9x06?

* * *

Ooh 10x20

* * *

That one had been in his meatsuit thousands of years too probably :P

* * *

> KEVIN  
> Now?
> 
> DEAN  
> Yesterday, Cinderella!

Wow Dean you’re being the evil stepmom there by making poor orphan Kevin work round the clock for you >.>

Subtle writing is subtle

* * *

> METATRON  
> Bravo, Gadreel! This move will erase the mark that has hounded you through the centuries. 

Maaark?  Oh dear :P

* * *

> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> Slain?
> 
> METATRON  
> In a word.
> 
> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> That… That is not who I am.

Well… You’re being tested on that >.> That probably should have been your warning sign not to go kill Kevin but I suppose you have to make some mistakes to discover who you really are… :P

(I still blame Metatron for this totally since he’s so horrifically manipulating Gadreel. And Dean’s being manipulated by Gadreel. It’s like a conga line of manipulation and poor Kevin is at the front)

* * *

I am glad in a way that these were Kevin’s last words to Dean on Kevin’s behalf:

> DEAN  
> You’re gonna have to trust me, okay, trust that I told you everything that I can for now. Can you do that?
> 
> KEVIN  
> I always trust you.  
> (DEAN nods.)  
> And I always end up screwed.
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, come on. Always? Not  _always._

I know it fucks Dean up – well the whole thing does – but the one thing this episode has remotely making this something I’m able to swallow (compared to 10x21) is that it does let Kevin speak for himself about his position, and unlike Charlie’s glorified in all the wrong ways death where it acted like she was heroic and brought it on herself and would have been happy to die for Dean, Kevin’s death is at least given the dignity of the narrative telling us it’s horrible?

And yeah I’m a Dean!girl and love the season 9 side of the Mark of Cain arc and descent in its broad strokes of what character exploration it does, and even kept rooting for the season 10 side for ages and I stay sympathetic to the wider issues affecting him that made him put Kevin in such a terrible place and invite Gadreel in in the first place, at least in this episode I am bitter as hell on Kevin’s behalf >.> Sorry, Dean. Not this episode. Next episode, we’ll talk :P

* * *

Anyway Dean also refuses to share any info with Kevin on what’s going on. A “lock yourself in your room and put up angel warding” would have done a world of good here. Even if he didn’t explain it would have bought time to explain later when the crisis was dealt with >.>

* * *

Also not for nothing but angels appear to have no sense of when holy oil is on the floor and are freakishly easy to trap in it so he could have just done that to supplement this sigil… I guess lesson learned with Lucifer

* * *

Thinking of that guy, hey look it’s that store room and “Sam”’s standing in the “hi I’m a possessed version of your loved one pretending to be them” space

* * *

I’m pretty sure those are the only 2 times we see the storeroom.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Those trials really messed you up.
> 
> SAM  
> Yes, I know that, Dea—
> 
> DEAN (hurriedly)  
> No, you don’t. 

Yeah you think you know it because that’s ALL Dean’s been telling you for 8 episodes

* * *

> SAM  
> He’s still in me? Wait. (laughs) That’s impossible, Dean. That couldn’t happen. I never invited him in.
> 
> DEAN  
> I tricked you into saying yes. It seemed like the only way.

TBH I know the “there ain’t no me if there ain’t no you” thing gets debated if it was Gadreel or Dean but Dean saying that it was a trick should invalidate everything he said ANYWAY because it’s FUCKED UP (I mean that should be obvious from 9x01 but here’s a second chance to say it :P)

* * *

> SAM  
> (sighs) So… Again. You thought I couldn’t handle something, so you took over!
> 
> DEAN  
> No, I did what I had to do! 

I mean, right before 9x01 we have 8x23 with Dean accidentally saying Sam needs chaperoning within his hearing.

* * *

this is Gadreel speaking not Sam, but he’s definitely pulling from deep in Sam so all his words are worth noting just for the fact that he’s channelling Sam directly to respond to this.

* * *

Anyway this is one of many episodes where you probably shouldn’t play a drinking game with “did what I had to do”

* * *

> KEVIN  
> Hey, do you notice anything a little bit off about Dean lately? Between you and me, I’m a little bit worried about him.
> 
> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> Don’t worry about Dean. 

Oh Kevin. Why are those your actual last words. >.> Wrong brother to notice something off about, while “Sam” is advancing on you with Gadreel shoulders :P

* * *

Kevin noooooooooo

* * *

> GADREEL-IN-SAM  
> Sorry about Kevin, but ultimately … it’s for the best.  
> I did what I had to.

*takes another shot*

* * *

I was right though, Gadreel never stole Kevin’s research – he left the entire translated angel tablet just lying around. We know Metatron only wanted the tablet for the power it offered but even so that’s careless :P

* * *

I can’t believe while all this drama is going on Cas is off-screen right now shopping for trenchcoats and stealing a car.

* * *

No I’m totally not avoiding look at or thinking about Kevin >.>

At least now we know he’s in Heaven FINALLY and all as season 11 went on its great un-fucking tour.

* * *

Thinking of Dabb trying to fix as much as he can… Road Trip!!


	10. 9x10

Filed under: reasons I trust Dabb

* * *

I still have no idea how the recap gets decided, but this one is strongly making out Gadreel to be the villain after his betrayal last episode, though we now find out some of his Cool Motive Still Murder backstory this episode. It pretty much just has the clip of Metatron outing him as Gadreel, then a clip from one conversation where Gadreel was like “you’re gonna rule heaven?” and then the clip from the next in the same location where he’s like “I will join you” so if you’re not paying attention he pretty much just gets a better job offer and switches sides.

(I stand by the fact that if you can still be friends with Sam and Dean and Cas after all their murdery nonsense you can forgive Gadreel even if you don’t approve of the show’s decision to kill Kevin off… Gadreel and Dean are pretty much paralleled directly for the shit they do this season and next :P)

* * *

Oh no Kevin’s plate with the crusts he never ate is still on the table. I am an emotion >.>

* * *

Dean is too. I think this is the first real tragedy to hit them in the Bunker, and the season so far pushed quite often the idea of home not being safe - it doubled for Sam unknowingly having Gadreel in him, but right here and now we see Dean trash the library - what had become Kevin’s space and the part more strongly linked to home for all of them compared to the war room - and I think sort of symbolic of Dean’s own inner turmoil and the way he feels/is to blame. The room looks too neat and perfect, like Kevin just got up for a minute and might be back, so he smashes everything around there not just out of rage but to make it look like conflict happened - to make some permanent change around them. Something visible he can hate himself for >.>

* * *

Abrupt scene change to the rockstar angel guy. I’m sensing Dabb likes this idea :P 

(season 12 spoilers?)

Same scenario though: here an angel just after the fall cut loose from any and all duty looking for a certain feeling while laying low from greater conflicts:

> GADREEL  
> Thaddeus. That’s a new look, I must say.
> 
> COREY/THADDEUS  
> Well, what can I say, you know? We all got booted out of the penthouse, and I just kind of figured… Why be an angel when you can be a God?

(which in the here and now is also a parallel to Metatron and if Gadreel hates a dickbag like this so much, he should really put two and two together with Metatron’s sales pitch from last episode :P)

Also to quickly backtrack, this always makes me laugh:

> MANAGER  
> You’re on in 10. The label wants to open with “Baby, Be My Baby.” Then you can roll right on into “Babycakes,” and then the clean version of “Babymaker.”

* * *

This is the best use of Sam’s angry eyes since season 4, and I’m kinda sad it’s pretty much this one episode.

* * *

> THADDEUS  
> Heaven has rules. Do the crime, do the time. That’s it.
> 
> GADREEL  
> I made a mistake.
> 
> THADDEUS  
> I was a guard. I was doing my job.

Thaddeus defers responsibility for his actions with the age old “excuse” for committing atrocities, while Gadreel owns to at least a mistake - just subtle language use things with this back and forth where he’s being portrayed still as potentially not evil, at least in comparison to worse people who are blatantly cruel:

> GADREEL  
> What you did to Abner, was that was your job?
> 
> THADDEUS  
> Your boyfriend? Now, that, mnh – that was just fun. Is that what you’re here for – the big payback?

I will stan for canonically queer Gadreel, always. (hey, this is our new showrunner, guys) There’s the satisfaction in the whole set up to meeting Abner, and how that’s portrayed, but mostly just because it’s revealed via an accusatory “your boyfriend” that isn’t met with a denial, but wow that sounds awfully familiar. :P 

(I’ve already gone on at several points how Gadreel being queercoded is interesting and plays into the story, so this is really just the throwaway mention that puts it into the text, so there isn’t a whole lot to say)

* * *

Also Cas is here now :3

I was rambling last episode about his grace situation paralleling how much agency he had in defining himself, and thinking of things that define his arc, now we have him in his new clothes, he’s notably shed the tie since last episode despite how it would have been super easy to incorporate into his new Look by slapping the potato sack trenchcoat on top and calling it a day. Instead he’s clearly shoved it in a pocket, and we don’t see it again until Claire, and his choice to incorporate it into his uniform comes not long before he gets the old grace back, when he’s much further down the road and making clearer choices about where he wants to spend his energy and who he wants to help.

In the here and now he comes running to Dean (Dabb waiting with a tripwire for the unwary Destiel shipper with “I came as soon as you called”) but the tie that was part of his human disguise is gone, and although he helps Dean here, his overall pull until 9x22 rubbishes that is to the angel war, and Cas has dressed for  _that_  occasion as he’s been put in the clothes he’ll finish the season in, and Cas also had no idea anything was THAT wrong until he sees all the broken lamps and Kevin’s notes on the floor, so the emergency situation upsets the priority he dressed for (that is, re-joining the angel war).  

(I remain convinced that Cas knows Dean has a thing for the trenchcoat look and this is yet another time in a row this season that Dean or Cas smile because of the other despite the horrible circumstances, this time entirely because of how Cas is dressed, and they derail their entire conversation for a moment for Dean to comment and Cas to bashfully idk give a little twirl to show off. In spirit. Anyway 9x18 finally got me because of that horrendous moment when they’re barfing rainbows down the phone to each other, so this is one in the series of those quiet little moments of Pure Love that they express for each other this season and ew gross can they not.)

* * *

(Ew and 9x22 when they’re sitting quietly at the end looking soppily at each other. Who is RESPONSIBLE for this)

* * *

I actually meant to grab this for the gun between them, but noticed the writing credit as I was lining up for a screenshot and, well. The answer to all the questions. The river ends at the source.

But yeah in the back and forth the gun is sticking out of the bag in between them and ignoring that guns are very phallic symbols so there’s probably a whole load else to read into that, it’s putting a symbol of the conflict between them, which of course, this episode ends with Dean walking off because of everything that happened, and walking into the next episode where he picks up the Mark of Cain arc which drives such a wedge between him & Cas that leads to 10x22. 

Considering this is their reconciliation conversation, and part of the Dabb series of Stuff That Happens Over That Table (the last being Dean throwing Cas into it in the fight >.>) relating to this arc, it’s very ominous that this peace and understanding has that warning of the gun protruding between them.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Dean, I’m sorry.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, well… Sorry don’t pay the bills, does it? It sure as hell ain’t gonna bring Kevin back.

Dean lashing out at Cas over sorry – like he did in 8x22. Before Gadreel kills Thaddeus the last thing he says is an empty “sorry” and I think Cas is rather than getting upset, beginning to learn about Dean and “sorry”… Obviously not equivalent scenarios as Cas is just using the sympathy version of “sorry” but it echoes the scene from 8x22, and has a  bit less of a life on the line weight behind it like Dean rejecting the previous “sorry” so they can have this moment in a way where there’s no falling out or weird lasting emotional damage for Dean’s comment. The rest of Cas’s dialogue is fully supportive in the right way – “you were stupid for the right reason” again making a distinction like with Gadreel in the opening scene of mistakes vs cruelty. And he suggests actual action they can take. Dabb likes Cas being the one to make tough calls etc – still thinking about him making Cas be the one to suggest Dean goes to Amara as the bomb in 11x23. In this case suggesting they catch Gadreel and hack him has the obvious point that it hurts Sam, but in the longer run could save him. And is a Cas-sanctioned “let’s go to Crowley for help” which again as with many of his compromises, is a huge deal because at this point in canon Cas is still the main victim of working with Crowley in the past, so acknowledging the need to work with him comes with all the same weight as Cas suggesting they load Dean up with souls and turn him into the bomb.

(And it’s sad that he’s exactly right about how dangerous this is – coming back here with hindsight will be super interesting because I think I haven’t been back here since before 10x01, never mind the entire post-elopement Drowley arc)

* * *

How do I always end up snort-laughing at Cas rolling his eyes to high heaven while

> DEAN  
> Yeah, I ain’t rubbing you.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> God, no.

…

Crowley playing hard to get with Dean? Naaaah. He wouldn’t. *eyeballs the rest of the season*

* * *

BTW all my comments about Drowley thus far in the entire rewatch from 5x10 onwards have been the bit on the rollercoaster where it’s going up. Now we’re over the top :P Wheeeee.

* * *

> CASTIEL [harshly]  
> Don’t pretend you care. You tried to kill him.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> I told him this was gonna happen. I was the only person who tried to warn him. I told him to run.
> 
> DEAN  
> From what?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> You. How many times am I gonna have to say this? People in your general vicinity don’t have much in the way of a life-span.

Lot going on here. (Angry Cas! eeee. He needs to hang out with Crowley more)

Cas looking alarmed at Dean when Crowley is saying the last part because he’s so worried about the effect of these words (and they’re part of what make Dean break off and go his own way at the end so Cas should be as they’re indirectly separating him from Dean and putting Dean in Crowley’s clutches)… I think he knows manipulation is at work but Crowley is basically just planting seeds and hoping for something better later, at this point, so Cas can’t exactly fight him over it.

He does however go right for Crowley for being supposedly uncaring about Kevin, because these two are mirrors for each other and BOTH on their empathy arc, with having been made human or near enough – the fact they have a love triangle over Dean is incredibly neat because of their surface text shoulder angel & demon roles to him, and to the way they relate to each other because of that. Cas knows right now Crowley has been “compromised” by human blood, but Crowley doesn’t know Cas has been human (and is still “compromised” in some ways just from character development and life experience taking him drastically far away from his old self in a short space of time – hence the wardrobe change when he’s back to being an angel or thereabouts now) Anyway it is a sort of flipping of expectations or SOMETHING, that Crowley is expressing empathy and sorrow while Cas is just projecting anger at him – maybe just something about the level of emotions they feel allowed to express, but it’s interesting with the deleted scene that Crowley and Cas have this discussion about being human as Crowley never cottons on about anything having been up with Cas (more than the usual of ALL the angels falling) until he finds out second hand.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Unless… Unless, of course, you can’t. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? The poor giant baby’s in trouble again, isn’t he?

Nothing like Crowley being used to point out the hideously obvious :P In this case no I’m not calling Sam a baby obviously, but that’s how Dean treats him in the sense that he’s never really been able to put Sam down again since John shoved him into his arms all those years ago as the house burned down…

* * *

As Cas, Dean and Crowley set out on their adventure, honestly just reflecting on how like 5 episodes ago Dean was legitimately terrified of Crowley.

* * *

Cas’s caaaar.

He likes it. :3

The car running out of gas because he had no idea how fuel worked is kind of super ominous for the whole grace arc… omen of things to come for him. And he DID run out of grace at a gas station and then Crowley “refuelled” him… Anyway goes with imagery from last episode of Cas not being able to use the TV because it wasn’t plugged in. Power is a big thing for him.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Riddle me this, boy wonder. Why do you need the wheels?

Double Batman reference, casting Crowley as a notable nemesis, and Cas as Robin, the sidekick with the ambiguously queer relationship to Batman. (Who as usual is Dean :P)

* * *

I mean

Not like Dean had a past love interest called “Robin” who was strongly paralleled to Cas or that Dean’s busy making cars work in an episode that opened with a rockstar after telling her he wanted to be a rockstar or a mechanic… :P I’m sure Dabb never looked at any of the episodes in the MotW stretch between his last episode and here…….

* * *

Anyway I am cackling about Cas and Crowley fighting for the backseat but again the battle for shotgun. Which is a thing Dabb used in 8x08 to show the tension between Sam and Cas for the season (very early on before most of the storytelling about it) – he now uses the same thing as the battle over Dean. Dean gets to dictate the terms here, and usurps Cas’s choice in his  _own car_. But on the other hand, while Cas can’t be smug about “winning” Dean by getting to ride up front with him while Crowley is exiled in the back (because this is the start of the whole arc so of course there can’t  _already_  be a clear winner even if we know who the right one should be), Cas only loses out because Dean is putting him with Crowley to keep an eye on him. And as I said, Den was/is terrified of Crowley in very recent canon. He’s being authoritative and ordering Cas around but to hide from Crowley that he’s really asking for protection, although Cas seems to be taking the squabble too seriously to notice Dean’s request is anything more than telling him to babysit :P

* * *

Metatron is drinking martinis again… (I says “again” – 11x21 is way over the horizon)

There’s probably a parallel to make here between 9x10 and 9x11 just because one episode to the next, of Metatron hanging at a bar and busy getting Gadreel to kill for him, and Crowley coming to find Dean at HIS choice of bar next episode with a plan that amounts to getting Dean to kill for HIM. I think they both even have the same pink neon light in them (pink is never a good sign >.>)

> METATRON  
> Strange seeing an old vessel, isn’t it? Like looking in a funhouse mirror.

Hey, I know that line :P Gadreel uses it on Sam in 9x18. Metatron really does indoctrinate him well >.>

* * *

You  know sometimes there are lines of dialogue where you kind of have your life flash before your eyes

> METATRON  
> And what about Dean Winchester?
> 
> GADREEL  
> You never gave me his name, Metatron.
> 
> METATRON  
> Not much for seizing the initiative, are we? Gadreel, we are writing our own epic story here. To make that work, sometimes you have to kill your darlings. It’s not like you haven’t done worse before.

I now honestly wonder if Dean’s moth-to-a-flame thing with supernatural dudes happened again and Gadreel fell in love with him? Which would be SO awkward from inside Sam, but whatever. :P This show has worse subtext with Dean and Sam adjacent stuff. This line obviously doubles up to be a sneaky way for Metatron to foreshadow he’s sending Gadreel next to kill Abner, aka a character identified as his boyfriend, so it’s paralleling his reluctance/choice not to kill Dean with this. In a way steeling him to kill Abner since Metatron lays into him about his cowardice and need for redemption when Gadreel complains about all the killing… But uuugh I never considered that Gadreel would catch feelings. Or that there’d be a direct parallel between Dean and his boyfriend.

*pulls a blanket over my head and disappears* This has somehow made Gadreel’s time in Sam when he was feeling all happy and hopeful even  _worse_. Never mind what’s to come. His interaction with Dean over the rest of the show is the Worst. Oh no. I’m not going to be able to watch it thinking about this >.>

* * *

ANYWAY I originally C&P’d that dialogue for more about Metatron using shitty writing advice to push Gadreel around like some sort of mafia boss creative writing teacher and the total misapplication of “kill your darlings” as actual advice to murder but I am emotionally devastated now.

Metatron, some advice: killing off all the interesting characters is not how to write.

*clears throat and stares in no specific direction in an episode starting with a funeral pyre*

Metatron’s gonna have to re-draft a bit around this slight problem but he doesn’t think Dean’s a serious threat and working out wtf to do with Cas now he’s insisted on being a main character again is probably putting him out rather more, as Cas is resistant to being killed off. The angel storyline has tried 3 times in the last 10 episodes and failed

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Looking for terrorists?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Looking for marks, slow boat.

I think Cas was more confused about why Crowley would be seeming to do something helpful for humanity by getting involved in anti-terrorism initiatives… :P

* * *

> CECILY  
> Better than you. That was Dean Winchester, and…Castiel?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Yes, I know. Without the tie, he’s barely recognizable. It’s so –
> 
> CECILY  
> …hot. I mean, human Castiel? Eh. But feathered Castiel?
> 
> It’s so out of character to use Crowley like this to deliver plot info to him as if he does not think Cas is hot stuff I mean really Dabb what are you doing

(this scene ends with cutting back to one of Cas’s best sexy angles, all chin and sharp profile just to prove him wrong :P)

Also I’m still not sure season 9 isn’t an elaborate joke all building up via hundreds of comments of how dangerous and sexy and scary Cas is to “nerdy little guy”

Like, prove me wrong.

* * *

Crowley points out that Cas took off the tie. We KNEW he had one on last episode… I think there’s a huge amount of deliberate writing at work in this whole thing with Cas’s tie and the new coat and so on. I think Crowley may have been suggesting Cas seems diminished to his eyes (the tie is Cas’s grace??), since he never saw him human, just going from BAMF season 8 Cas (when did they last interact? Not as far back as that time when they met for the first time since season 7 and Crowley rattled off 3000 innuendos in 2 lines of dialogue while obsessed with Cas’s power equalling sexual potency, surely? *rests chin in my hand* I have no memory of any other interaction >.>

OH in Crowley’s office in 8x21 where he shot Cas. Okay. :P)

Aaaaanyway obviously Cecily is coming from the opposite direction, knowing Cas has been powerless but now he’s angeled up again in a scary sexy way she’s admiring him while Crowley is looking down on him.

> CECILY  
> So captain sexy out there totally cuts another angel’s throat, yoinks his Grace, and now? He’s got his mojo back – minus the broken wings.

(“Captain” doesn’t have the same ring as “commander”)

And Dean is just happy Cas is there at all and his powers are completely un-used this episode, he’s just here to be a friend. <3

* * *

This is not at all bi subtext:

> CROWLEY  
> Nice to know someone’s still loyal.
> 
> CECILY [unconvincingly]  
> Uh-huh.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> That is, of course, if you’re not playing both sides?
> 
> CECILY [with a pointed look]  
> Wouldn’t you?

Nope

Nothing to see here

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Your phallus on wheels just ran a red light in Somerset, Pennsylvania, 10 minutes ago.

She is a lady, Crowley, don’t you talk about Baby that way >.>

* * *

No seriously, Baby is strongly feminine coded as a home or womb at many points that Crowley has it all backwards :P He is obsessed with dick size and probably thinks Dean is overcompensating, or at least wants to remind Dean it can be taken that way because they’re angry flirting

* * *

(and Cas is pissed off :P)

* * *

Oh boy here we go, Gadreel’s reuniting with his long lost love >.>

(I like that he’s driving the Impala and clearly gets really fond of it based on the car he ends up driving. Since he has it while he’s still a ~villain~ it’s a nice little sign of potential for redemption just because he still remembers the good things. Also now I think we’ve been told he’s in love with Dean the fact he copies his car is the death of me)

* * *

Aaah, the open shock horror betrayal on his face when he sees Abner has a cute human daughter who he’s enjoying having inherited from his vessel. Like, Gadreel barely knows what to do with his hands anyway but at this point he’s practically doggy paddling to stay afloat in this surprise twist on his expectations.

Abner, of course, being the example of someone who actually tries the normal human life thing which has been, especially in 9x06, coded as the safe heterosexual option, lying low, acting human… In this case, finding a family and being a normal family man in the suburbs now. And his boyfriend comes back like a spectre from the past and can’t believe what he’s seeing

(And yeah I know I know mentioning the “human daughter inherited from a vessel” was phrased that way because Claire returning in a Dabb episode, but of course the whole found family aspect of that was completely subverted, mostly because Cas and Claire knew exactly what the deal was between them and subverted normality, and she’s more like a ward to him than anything)

Of course that does also make Gadreel a Dean parallel for walking into Cas’s life and at least for the main part of the episode in 9x06 having the mistaken belief that the date was real (like Cas) and so that extreme reaction from Gadreel on discovering his boyfriend has moved on from him and is, like, deep in the closet in his new life (aka his wife has no idea he’s an angel and he’s pretending to be the surface level man that was the vessel just with a personality transplant) is kind of the visual example of what Dean suppressed heavily when he found out Cas had a date.

(Now I think about it, the angel in 9x01 that jumped Dean and Gadreel fought in the parking lot was also a family man angel, leaving behind a magazine perfect family to hunt Dean down – now I find it quite interesting they share that “struggle” :P)

* * *

> ABNER Hey. Delilah, this is daddy’s best friend. Can you say hi?

Best friend. [Oh dear](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/147765511673/ive-been-seeing-arguing-about-the-siren-episode).

* * *

> ABNER  
> Customer support – computers mostly. It’s like answering prayers, but they pay you for it.

What a precious cinnamon roll

* * *

> GADREEL  
> I killed him, Abner. I got our revenge.
> 
> ABNER  
> I w – I wish you hadn’t done that.
> 
> GADREEL  
> But why? He tortured us – you most of all.

…

> [GADREEL]   
> Easy there, brother. This young man has prayed for our assistance. Are we creatures of wrath or compassion? I would argue the latter.

Metatron has ruined the nice angel from 9x01 :<

Like I said back when I was watching that one, Gadreel’s arc is compassion down into wrath and then back up into compassion. Metatron giving him an easy target for vengeance seems to show immediately how it’s twisted him away from the ideal… Considering how close he and Abner were – 700 years may be one of the longer relationships on the show :P – I would guess he and Gadreel ended up with very similar politics, but of course Gadreel has been led astray and Abner serves as the example of what he’s strayed from…

But of course he’s “rejected” Gadreel by picking a human family to be with, and so he can’t sway Gadreel back to the right path because they’re now emotionally estranged, and Gadreel is hurt.

Metatron, using the vessel’s name to lure Gadreel there without spoiling the surprise, clearly knows full well the conflict Gadreel will find there (“kill your darlings”) and that this is the ultimate test of vengeance over compassion for Gadreel.

And of course if Metatron is manipulating one character over their love interests, it doesn’t seem all that unlikely he’ll do it again in another episode… maybe one by Dabb… at the end of the season… :3

* * *

> ABNER  
> The key to happiness? It’s getting the one thing you want most and never letting it go.
> 
> GADREEL  
> And what if there’s a price?
> 
> ABNER  
> There’s always a price. But it’s worth paying.

Uh

…

……..

I’m a  _little_  worried about word choice there?? You’d think the “price” would be “literally everything from 9x11 > 11x23 in that arc” as Dean’s suffering leading to character development leading to the happy resolution, but… the way Mary was brought back, I hadn’t considered there might be a price?

Although I guess the emotional toll might be enough to qualify as they’re going to have to seriously adapt to this new situation and all the trauma involved in having Mary back/Mary finding out what’s happened while she’s dead…

I’m sure it will be fine >.>

* * *

ANYWAY season 9 thoughts about those lines? Like, wider application? *claws my way past season 11*

Honestly, I’m finding a hard time thinking of anything happy in season 9 but the season teases a lot of things that COULD be happy before taking them away or just showing us if only’s – Dean getting to be with Cas is one of those things, and Cas wanting to be with Dean in return - the El Sol sign between them in 9x09 showing the dream relationship - but he lets go at the end of this episode, and meanwhile in 9x22 Cas chooses to cling to Dean even at great cost to his other goals but of course immediately loses him anyway.

* * *

(Aaaand I’m back at “I could go with you” 

it is INCREDIBLE how much 11x23 fucked me up. I don’t think any single episode has had that much effect on me apart from 9x18 and 6x20)

* * *

Abner is talking about clinging to his new found family he’s made for himself, anyway.

Gadreel hearing this is what Abner wanted most looks horrifically conflicted but we know ends up killing him. Jealousy and wrath are allowed to win out. No pig’s heart in a box to convince Metatron he killed Snow White or anything, he just goes for it. >.>

* * *

Mmm Cas n Dean walking together

* * *

Mmmm Dean stopping to pet baby

* * *

(I assume Crowley was left in Cas’s car with the radio playing)

* * *

Gadreel washing his hands of Abner’s blood is such a powerful image… obviously the whole Shakespearean tragedy thing. It’s this almost more than Kevin which for Gadreel  _personally_ suggests his redemption arc can only end in death, just because of the blood-that-never-washes-off thing of killing someone he loves. Obviously to the audience/surviving main characters, the blood on his hands that’s more emotionally significant to us is Kevin. (Cain also has to ask Colette to look away as he goes over his own personal moral event horizon and sacrifices peace for killing, and thereafter is on a path where only death will stop him… it’s super cheery outlooks for the Dean mirrors in these parts, although he does eventually survive it by not killing Cas or Sam and adverting the prophecy)

* * *

> GADREEL [without turning around]  
> You should not have come here, Dean.
> 
> DEAN  
> You killed my friend, then you take my brother, and you think I’m gonna let that stand?
> 
> GADREEL  
> I allowed you to live.

Aaaaaah?? I didn’t ask to ship this??? Fuck you Dabb?????????? I’m so excessively sad about Gadreel because if he can kill Abner when it comes to “kill your darlings” then Dean is like, literally nothing, not compared to the 700 yrs relationship he just bloodily ended. But he still doesn’t  _want_  to do it and regrets it came to that? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

* * *

*whispers* my poor murdery children

* * *

I may love Gadreel, but him getting punched out by Cas is extremely satisfying, especially since Cas gets very little catharsis for everything about being sent away. Dean actually kinda goes for the kill, holding an angel blade, and rushes him, although I assume because Cas was there as back up and they were sticking with the plan to hack Gadreel, so it was a fake out that he’d try and kill Sam.

Considering next episode gives him Ye Olde Sibling Murder Curse, there’s a few moments where Dean says he’d kill Sam or pretends to etc.

* * *

Anyway! Halfway through the episode and we finally reach the main point (oh wow, is like the next 15 minutes an extended sequence? There’s no reason for us to be anywhere else now we got the last little “Abaddon is coming” thing out of the way so with all 5 other main characters in one place, there’s nowhere for us to go)

* * *

(this in contrast to the long sequence last episode of Cas being tortured & getting his grace back when the pacing stretched the episode out over an entire week and despite there being loads of characters in play, in their timeline they had nothing to cut the Cas stuff with… Not totally complaining as I liked having uninterrupted Cas, but there’s a structural difference between both episodes having an extended torture sequence in an abandoned warehouse, and Dabb’s feels more like the stage has been set for a play in a good, dramatic way :P)

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> What’s your name? I thought I knew every angel in heaven, but I’ve never seen you.

Wait a minute, Dabb… I was talking about how some of the other writers have given up and started making the angels name themselves to Cas – like Muriel last episode although others have done it and others like Hannah will… Mind you Cas didn’t even know who Naomi was and the remaining watercooler angels from the admin department who by and large survive the angel wars into season 10 and 11 seem to know who she is much better, mostly because the admin department and therefore her peeps didn’t get involved in all the messy crap as much :P

(I’m trying to remember if Dabb’s ever made an angel introduce themselves to Cas, and I suspect Ambriel did)

* * *

Anyway Gadreel is trying to incite Dean to stab him in cold blood, because he knows now as ever his protectiveness of Sam is about the only thing that is keeping Gadreel safe. (We know he fears death way less than imprisonment, but there’s the whole thing with Crowley that Gadreel can clearly tell this isn’t regular old captivity even before Crowley tries to explain so he’s not as bad as  he was in 9x18 when faced with being left tied up forever)

> DEAN  
> Why are you doing this, huh? We fought together. And I trusted you. I thought you were one of the good guys!
> 
> GADREEL  
> I am doing what I have to do.
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, so am I.
> 
> [DEAN nods to CROWLEY who gets up and picks up a large thick needle from a tray and moves toward GADREEL.]
> 
> CROWLEY  
> So am I.

This season

Guessing that’s a “chug your drink” moment. Crowley is lampshading the catchphrase by having fun with it being kind of like, yeah, no one’s making me this is just fun but everyone’s saying it so I might as well join in :P

Anyway

Dean and trust. And confronting Gadreel about the betrayal. Gadreel seems horribly conflicted by Dean’s profession that he thought Gadreel was good, because Gadreel wants to BE good, and Dean (part of his tragedy tbh using himself up like this) is everyone’s moral compass. Especially back in season 6, where it was his main arc sort of stuff. But with Cas the issue of trust has been everywhere lately, and they’re going to have a the “trusting couple” conversation soon… Dean sort of admitting here that again he put his trust in another angel (whoops that phrasing is… totally deliberate about 8x23 :P) and felt he lost it, just like he was angry at Cas in 8x22.

* * *

Things I will love forever: Cas seeing Dean walking off because he can’t take watching any more, and immediately following him.

> CASTIEL  
> Hey.

Full supportive boyfriend mode activated.

Well, until Dean asks how Cas is doing :P

> CASTIEL  
> You want to talk about me now?

The emphasis is more on “now” but Cas has been running on emergency mode to help Dean, and I don’t think self-reflection was included in that, not least because even if he is acting like all is well and good between them, the hurt from the last half dozen episodes is still very much between them, as part of the LONG process of Cas being made to feel exiled and not sure he belongs that is still haunting him to this day, and Dean’s damage control in season 11 is obviously too little too late letting him stay in the Bunker in the first part, and the strongest emotional bridge he can offer after that is in 11x23 in the beer run conversation, trying to get them back to friendship which doesn’t have all that drama between them. Phrases like

> DEAN  
> Yeah, humor me, man. How you doing?

Don’t go a very long way in convincing Cas that Dean is genuinely concerned and asking altruistically since he’s seeking distraction.

(Dean is SO terrible at the emotional stuff, I’m sure he and Cas only work so well for so long because Cas is too – but Cas has caught up fast and at this point exceeds Dean :P)

Anyway, Cas manages an uncertain

> CASTIEL  
> Uh… I’m okay.

Because he himself doesn’t really know the consequences of what he’s done, just that it’s blatantly the sort of thing that has consequences and so again not just the way Dean is asking him, but what he’s asking him is something that Cas has no comforting, easy answer for.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t have a choice.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah. Well, that’s usually how it goes.

*takes another drink* Dean seems to be getting it too – Cas was the only one who didn’t say it earlier but now he’s repeating it to Dean.

(Worth mentioning that he DID have the choice to stop fighting but didn’t, but the choice to live was made in order to serve Sam and Dean by telling Dean about Ezekiel, and the actions required to live and be useful were where the cost came, just so we know where Cas is coming from – obviously Dean and Gadreel’s “I did what I had to do” stuff I’ve gone over and over in every episode so far but I’m not sure how much I talked about Cas. Again, this leads into his long arc as just a tool, fucking up his body with the bad grace to get things done)

* * *

But then!

> DEAN  
> Cas… I’m sorry.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> About what?
> 
> DEAN  
> Kickin’ you out of the bunker. That’s, uh… You know, not telling you about Sam.

:’) My son. Thank you for a genuine, using your words, apology. (One of the rare times he does it and means it when he says “sorry” rather than showing sorry – this is out of the blue in the flow of the conversation, so like with the beer run, Dean’s dragged this up from his own personal well of guilt rather than being forced to talk by the situation)

And just like that, they bridge this horrible gap and are now on genuinely good footing for, like, the rest of the season :P

> DEAN  
> Yeah, I got played.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I thought I was saving Heaven. I got played, too.
> 
> DEAN [with a weak smile]  
> So you’re sayin’ we’re both a couple of dumbasses?
> 
> CASTIEL [gently smiling back]  
> I prefer the word “trusting.” Less dumb. Less ass.

(The stage directions on the transcript are killing me – there wasn’t actually much need for me to C&P that whole bit >.>)

But yeah again the trust thing – in a way this is good just because Dean is obviously in a trust issues breakdown because of Gadreel and everything – Cas saying this shows that trust isn’t a weakness, perhaps just a necessary thing to be good (again, the theme of mistakes vs malice and Gadreel is our case study in goodness this season, albeit lapsing right now :P)… I mean back in 8x22 Dean was upset Cas didn’t trust him, while obviously his part was that he trusted Cas and felt hurt, but Cas is underlining the lack of trust as a mistake, because he got played, and so again they write off their past argument. (And 9x22, again, has an argument flare up within the episode, and by the end of it, Dean writes off the argument with trust.)

I think it’s interesting that Dean n Cas are put together like this – they’re now in such a good place the only way their conversation can end is Crowley interrupting them, because they’re at the point where anything else to say would move them forwards, as this has all been stopping the backslide in their relationship and bringing them back up to a safe level place. The argument at the end of the episode is between Dean n Sam, and though Cas watches him leave mournfully, it’s not between them that Dean goes, and while they’re kept at arm’s length from now on, they don’t have major conflict, e.g. demon!Dean is kept the hell away from Cas, until the end of season 10.

Their personal arc in the mean time is pretty much all deliberately keeping them apart, but episodes like 9x18 and 9x22 play up hard that they miss each other and worry about each other, while of course Cas is being dragged around by the angel plot on Metatron’s chessboard, and Dean is being seduced by Crowley.

* * *

Anyway. Time for drama. Cas finally gets to learn it’s Gadreel.

I love Cas getting to be angry but he kind of works himself up into a fury which makes me so sad, especially when he stops to glance at Dean before accusing Gadreel for starting the apocalypse, indirectly. Which always makes me think Cas would always take a universe where he never met Dean for the sake of Dean not going through all that, which kills me. >.>

* * *

Also he sounds so much like Dean while he’s shaking Gadreel and calling him a son of a bitch aaaaah. He’s a bad influence on you, Cas. :P 

Dean gets to stop and soothe Cas which I approve of :3

* * *

I still wonder if Dabb was due to write 11x18 and the whole dawning of Dabb era thing messed stuff up (11x17 feels to me like cramming in an extra episode while 11x18 feels like it’s got Dabb fingerprints all over the concept with the mirrors to this episode)… I guess Bucklemming did what was needed to get the point across but I still would have liked to see it done by him :P

* * *

> GADREEL  
> It won’t work. You will never find your brother. Go ahead. Poke and prod. I can sit in this chair for years and watch you fail over and over again. I’ve endured much worse than this, Dean. So…much…worse. And I have all the time in the world.

Gadreel continues making this personal between him and Dean despite the others in the room… Considering his later PTSD he’s probably hoping they do just kill him, playing brave off the idea of eternal torment that he’s suffered.

(Also despite Crowley doing the torturing, making it between him and Dean has callbacks to Dean’s time in Hell and 4x16 – there’s the whole bit with Dean n Cas talking by the whirly fan in the background, which was such a strong image in the background of the Dean and Alastair scenes. Dean has endured what FELT like eternal torment, and, quite likely, done much worse than what they’ve done to Gadreel so far. It’s an uncomfortable comparison between them, I think just upsetting Dean all that much more as further hard choices approach)

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> It might work. But I can’t possess a vessel without permission.
> 
> [CROWLEY clears his throat and raises his hand as a volunteer]
> 
> DEAN  
> No. Not happening.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Don’t be daft. Demons can take what they want. I can burrow into that rat’s nest of a head.

Again, Dean terrified of Crowley and not trusting him – Crowley being important in saving Sam, and earning his freedom is the first step really to go as far as 10x17 and Dean and Crowley talking about what makes family. He certainly earns enough trust Dean will hear him out next episode despite token protests (Dean’s horrible mood from everything else obviously not helping at all). At this point Crowley to Dean is still the monster that has been hurting them for years and been a sketchy, bad ally who they use and uses them to get an end result they agree on from greater threats. Not someone to trust with loved ones. And to look as far as 11x18, it’s not even an argument that Crowley can pop into Casifer and Dean takes it on faith that Crowley’s only trying to help – and that they then save Crowley in turn from Lucifer while he’s in there. At this point Crowley is earning all his brownie points that even when he turns Dean into a demon, don’t actually lose him that trust Dean offers from 9x11 onwards – even if he protests the way they use Crowley changes, on a personal level.

* * *

And also going on in that exchange, the messiness of the consent violations going on there – Cas is still bound by regular angel rules even when the problem is an angel who isn’t being faithful to their rules of vessel consent, staying in on a bad yes. Dean is STILL acting as power of attorney over Sam and consent, agreeing in the end to another consent violation by Crowley, in a terrible example of two wrongs making a right, aka the point is the horrible moral compromise Dean made is now being underlined, when Crowley uses this phrasing to describe the way demons can possess without regard to consent. And Cas helping by burning off the anti-possession tattoo, removing Sam’s resistance to demonic possession, means the whole squad pitches in on this.

* * *

Looks cool when Crowley does the thing though. :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> A demon and an angel walk into my brother. Sounds like a bad joke.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Dean, if this doesn’t work…
> 
> DEAN   
> It’ll work.

Again, Dean forced into a place where he pretty much HAS to express faith and trust in Crowley

This is not ominous at all so soon after the “trusting couple” conversation.

* * *

Sam’s been cleaning guns while he sits around in the “Bunker” – something he’s shown doing when he’s in a really bad way… It showed up again at some point in season 11 after one trauma or another.

(I am … genuinely losing track of what awful stuff happened to Sam in season 11)

* * *

> SAM  
> I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense. Why is this ghoul only chomping on dead cheerleaders?

Do you remember one zillion years ago in this rewatch, back in 4x14 where I was like, hey that outcome of the episode if you take it on face value is super awful about trusting things pretending to be your brother, wow sure would be awkward if something pretending to be their brother popped up in a couple of episodes? And then the only time we ever had ghouls of course was for poor Adam, with one of them pretending to be their brother?

Anyway, Sam should really be a bit more worried about fake!Dean offering him a beer while Sam’s puzzling over a case about ghouls is all I’m saying.

(Yes, Jump The Shark was Dabbflin… You can’t turn a corner without smacking into an episode with Dabb’s name on :P)

(There’s a wider theme about trusting things that look like your brother in this season – Sam is possessed because of the Gadreel!Dean visage asking him permission back in 9x01)

* * *

(Also the blurring between Gadreel and Dean again – Sam is talking to an off-screen Dean who is all created by Gadreel, as part of Sam’s immersion)

* * *

The Bunker lamps have little bats or angels or something on the cord pulls. Cute.

* * *

Sam’s reaction when Crowley is suddenly standing by him is hilarious. Again, Crowley still being a threat instead of an ally, especially to Sam who never warms to him… He’s the monster from the basement suddenly unleashed to be standing right beside Sam…. And then he speaks a code word that shows he’s a friend. Because he’s been the false lead for the threat from within the entire time.

* * *

(And then Crowley gets to shoot Sam because HE is having a very good day, unlike everyone else in this episode :P)

* * *

> SAM [heartbreakingly]  
> Did I kill Kevin?

The transcript is ridiculous, just so you know.

Bonus friend points for Crowley for trying to reassure Sam about that when he doesn’t really have to – although it does help on his mission to make Sam see that he’s possessed, again, acting with concern and compassion in this space where no one would really be in a place to judge him for it :P

I know Sam is deeply predisposed to hate Crowley and all, but he sees Crowley big damn hero moment punching Gadreel in the face on Sam’s behalf so really they may not ever be friends but I hope Sam grudgingly continues to send him a Christmas card every year or something. He kind of flubbed killing Crowley in 10x22 so maybe that was on his mind a bit >.> Not like when Dean is conflicted because Crowley has a whole set of weird meanings to him, but you know, Sam and Crowley as  _actual_  dictionary definition Frenemies :P

* * *

*continues my 3 year amazement that Sam can kick Gadreel in the face from lying on the floor because dang these are tall men*

* * *

Yay Sam’s free etc etc

It’s such a simple good victory for him there’s not too much to say >.> The longer thematic repercussions are much less about Sam and autonomy than Dean inviting karma down on his head via loss of his own autonomy and Sam ends up back in an emotional repercussions only state of mind for the rest of the season, so the actual moment of booting Gadreel out is just good on its own merit but I can’t think of anything else actually directly relevant to it? :P

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Go. The back door. I’ll handle this.
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, ‘cause you’re such a good guy?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Right now, I’m the goodest guy you got.

Dean missed Crowley’s turn as a good guy but I think this episode also helps mess up a first time viewer about Crowley as he HAS been helpful in the past and this technically is one of his “helpful” seasons in the pattern of him being helpful/antagonistic and the story plays with that. We trust Crowley a lot more than Dean does for seeing what he did in Sam’s head. But obviously Dean knows that whatever Crowley did worked, which he can mull over in the long term, and Crowley buying them time to escape is a visible instant moment of him being “good” that he can earn brownie points with Dean before next episode.

* * *

> DEAN  
> This don’t make us square. I see you again –
> 
> CROWLEY  
> I’m dead. Yes, I know. I love you, too.

Pfft. :P Sometimes when you’re just setting out on a journey of gay chicken you just don’t know where it will take you or how far… I feel Crowley would regret this line more than Dabb though :P probably a bad idea to jokingly confess your feelings a few too many times, because eventually you end up believing yourself?

Crowley always takes their death threats and turns them around to pretend it’s flirting when Sam or Cas do it as well:

> CASTIEL  
> When you betray us, I’ll be the one to carve out your heart.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Oh, Cas, such a flirt.

But of course he seeks Dean out again in the very next episode despite this threat, whereas he keeps his distance from the other two because as I’ve been documenting this whole time, they WILL kill him if they have a chance – although with Sam he may have earned an amnesty which lasts only as far as 10x01 for sure. With Dean, he knows the threat doesn’t have any weight, and by repeatedly approaching him and ignoring the threats it quickly does turn it into a line which only has the weight of a flirt because Dean isn’t following through and Crowley is showing him he’s unafraid of the threat, undermining it more.

After all, Dean already saved Crowley once this season when Sam’s thought was to “stab him in the brain” :P

* * *

Anyway Crowley gets to monologue because no one loves the sound of their voice more, and he’s always good for that :P

> CROWLEY  
> See, that’s your problem, love. You think this is a fight.
> 
> ABADDON  
> It’s not?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> It’s a campaign. Hearts and minds, that’s what’s important.

I feel almost bad for him, considering the arc of Hell slipping from between his fingers already began even with early warning signs in season 8, and now that this is becoming a main arc thing, we know that story so far basically goes to a walk out in Hell, and the last we heard on Crowley’s authority was that it was practically gone, demons raiding his power source, and for now Lucifer on the loose again, posing a worse threat to him than Abaddon ever did.

* * *

“almost” bad.

It’s pretty funny watching him lose everything. :P Crowley the underdog is infinitely more interesting than the bored king of hell with nothing to worry about.

* * *

Oooh dear and then the conversation on the bridge, which they can’t cross. Dean hangs away to the side as Cas heals Sam. He and Cas are pretty much done for now since the “trusting couple” conversation – there’s nothing urgent between them, so Cas hangs back in turn after Dean comes to collect his reckoning from Sam. Faction-y faction-y. >.> And Dean not included with Cas in either conversation, being a Cas n Sam conversation and a Dean n Sam argument.

* * *

> SAM  
> You lied to me. Again.
> 
> DEAN  
> I didn’t have a choice.

*takes a drink*

(I haven’t even documented all of these, there were a couple last episode I skipped >.>)

The lack of choice here of course being the crushing weight of the co-dependency, as 9x07 carefully laid out for us when it came to the roots of Dean carrying Sam’s weight.

Sam of course counters this with the fact that Dean might not have thought he had a choice, but in doing so that clashes with Sam’s right to have a choice, and he knows his choice would have been to die. Mutually incompatible issues, basically, and a continuation of their irreconcilable cross-purposes over Carver era.

(Dean has different rules for this arguments than he does with Cas – he and Cas talk and get back to a really good place this episode but he doesn’t even try to take this path with Sam, resorting to desperation and not apologising… Perhaps because he’s not truly sorry that Sam is alive and this may have been terrible but he’s back in front of him nominally better (which I think is the point Dean makes in 9x12 or 9x13 at some point? Or I just read meta arguing that… it’s been a while since I was here :P) whereas with Cas he knew he hurt him, it only brought sadness and on the other side of the situation Dean only has regret and can see Cas’s side of it because Cas isn’t saying anything that Does Not Compute like Sam saying he was ready to die)

* * *

Dean has also, I think, already made up his mind by the time he talks to Sam about leaving and so is also doubly hard to argue with because he has already crossed to a point where he is self-punishing and so on, which goes riiiight back to the stuff I was saying at the beginning of the episode about Dean’s mindset:

> DEAN   
> No. That is not on you. Kevin’s blood is on my hands, and that ain’t ever getting clean. I’ll burn for that. I will. But I’ll find Gadreel. And I will end that son of a bitch. But I’ll do it alone.

I suppose with 11x21 and Chuck bringing Kevin back briefly, though we see ghost!Kevin and he tries to talk peace between Sam and Dean this season, it’s too near and right in the middle of their fight. From the far distance of season 11, a God-given glimpse of Kevin and the message that he’s at peace allows them to process it again in better times when it’s not so close. I think for season 12 being a clean slate it probably was a good idea to wash away as MUCH of the bitterness of Carver era as possible, and Kevin is the main victim (unfortunately, because Charlie’s death is so mishandled it has a 1 episode impact (thanks for trying, though, Dabb) whereas Kevin actually affects this season quite a lot and remains as a source of pain and grieving, so at least he was killed for manpain correctly? :P)

Anyway, I think it allows Dean to actually maybe wash his hands of that blood a little in the long run, even if it’s completely staged and you can take it with a huge grain of salt (I took it with a huge inhalation of toast and nearly died when I first saw Kevin back on the screen :P) it’s something that happens for the characters and up to us to decide if we like it or not but I think Dean got that absolution.

More blurring between Dean and Gadreel as well – Dean saying the blood is on his hands when of course we already had the imagery of Gadreel washing the blood from his hands when they caught him.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Come on, man. Can’t you see? I’m… I’m poison, Sam. People get close to me, they get killed…or worse. You know, I tell myself that I-I – I help more people than I hurt. And I tell myself that I’m – I’m doing it all for the right reasons, and I – I believe that. But I can’t – I won’t… Drag anybody through the muck with me. Not anymore.

Oh Dean >.>

Here he defines himself by his worth as a hunter – he believes still that fighting evil is something he can do and that it is the right course, but he also sees the collateral damage of it on his personal life (he’s only just managed to salvage a friendship with Cas, and hearing a “I did what I had to do” to have Cas back in front of him is at least unsettling… and of course he’s managed to salvage Sam’s life at great moral cost) and in this way he’s now completely open for Crowley next episode, as he’s someone who can work with Dean, who Dean can get close to, who he does not give a fuck about dragging through the muck with him, who can take him as he is and will always be worse than him no matter how bad Dean feels about his own choices… Dean WANTS to fight evil and so he vows to go after Gadreel, and Crowley can convince him to hunt Abaddon easily too, but of course that’s at obvious moral cost to Dean and his path to being turned into nothing more than a killing machine. As Crowley says about Abaddon being an attractive choice:

> CROWLEY  
> And then along came…The brute. She’s strong…and a knight and immortal – at the moment.

Anyway Dean decides emotional isolation is the only way to protect the world from himself, and in the end becomes something that would murder the world. >.>

* * *

> SAM  
> Go. I’m not gonna stop you. But don’t go thinking that’s the problem, 'cause it’s not.

I’m pretty sure this is really debated but tbh I don’t really remember any old meta about it and these days old arguments from early Carver era are in the bitter brother factions so the message is twisted around their narratives

(not that my narrative is not heavily twisted, but I’m pretty much TFW positive all the time as often as I can be so at least I’m not twisting bitterly around the old arguments whatever else I may do :P)

To me this just reads as Sam hearing what Dean says here and being like, okay, you can go, I’m hurt, we need space, this is a disaster and I’m not going to beg you to stay because wow I’m not going to be put in a position to do that after everything you did to me… denying Dean a chance to be cajoled and reassured and brought back into the fold (Cas staying silent watching this as he knows this is Not His Place but he would rather Dean didn’t go >.>) because taken wrong, that could be emotional blackmail for Sam to beg Dean to stay after Dean hurts him, so Sam makes a good choice.

But he tells Dean “that’s not the problem” re: everything Dean just expressed, filled with self-loathing and the conviction that everything he touches dies or is corrupted and hurt. You could take it two ways, either that Sam requires the real problem (aka everything Dean did to hurt him because of the co-dependency and his inability to let go) to be addressed and the problem between them is that and he’ll let Dean go if he won’t see that, or that this is why Sam wants him to leave or whatever… That the real reason he’s angry is because Dean’s saying self-pitying stuff rather than exploring the issues behind their problems.

(This probably fits into their long and terrible string of conversations attempting to address this, where they’re always vague and terrible about communicating, and once again whatever baby steps they make over the years usually have steps backwards right on their heels, they never address the core problems because they barely understand them, and 11x23 with Amara and Chuck is the first time the generic script of reconciliation was voiced out loud to give any hope that Sam and Dean might use this script themselves some time? I feel considerably better about the potential for them to move on as of this hiatus, but up until 11x23 this argument was the hugest bash your head on the wall bummer :P)

* * *

Anyway, Dean implicitly leaves Cas to look after Sam and mooches off on his own into Bad Decision Land, and it’s raining and everyone looks sad.

* * *

On the plus side, Dean is gonna go grow some serious Misery Stubble between episodes so I for one can’t wait. :3

* * *

OH deleted scene!

“Make me, sunshine” Crowley says to Cas, about turning off the TV. Cas having been associated with the sun by 9x06.

The room for this is VERY orange. Which, with Cas’s rug, comes up a lot in his personal angel vs human struggle

Crowley says he was “human adjacent” which reminds me of him saying “Hell adjacent” in 6x20 and then he says “went all the way” re: Cas being human. Because innuendo. Humanity connected to sexuality again, although the bigger picture is supposed to be the scope of human emotion and the chance for domesticity etc as Abner shows, and the potential for friendship, family and love of all sorts as the series of episodes we’ve just come through have focused on.

Then Crowley says “Who wants to be a stupid, stinking, emotional pile of meat” with that significant look at Cas….

… and Dean walks in the door.

Angel & Demon on his shoulders, vying for his love >.> This is a straight line to the deleted scene (*grinds teeth*) in 10x14 about “maybe he’s your boyfriend”

It’s immediate set up for Crowley’s wobble e.g. in Blade Runners. But being delivered as a challenge to Cas, with a compare and contrast on their feelings, binds their stories together on this one.


	11. 9x11

or: this has a ‘help this has been the most exhausting week of my life but I did it anyway’ disclaimer because like Dean i am powered by terrible decisions

apologies to future!me if I ever re-read this trying to find something important I thought I said here but didn’t because I was at the beach not writing this :P

* * *

Things are fucked up when the recap is 90% made of the last 2 episodes only and you’re looking at the characters like “Oh you sweet summer child”

Same for the cold open demons. You’re shooting the Father of Murder with muskets?  _Really_? You wouldn’t use those on a NORMAL demon.

the recap stresses hard that Abaddon is a Knight of Hell, so the “protect the knight!” panic is immediately upsetting expectations, and showing well that he’s a threat like they’ve never seen before. Last time we saw Abaddon on screen Crowley was going on about how she was “immortal - at the moment”

Pretty certain Crowley’s been plotting this since 8x23 (he has had nothing but time to think) and while he may or may not have known all the details, he knew enough, and starting the episode showing Abaddon seemingly in danger is a good reply to last episode, to show what may have been at least a gleam in Crowley’s eye of a plan

* * *

Aah, and I forgot that the bar Dean starts this episode in IS the one from last episode:

> CROWLEY  
> This bar is a bust. That waitress is trouble with a capital VD, and your prey, Gadreel, has left the building.

This is interesting because all we have to mark time passing is Dean’s stubble (holy shit it’s like looking into a very miserable sun) but Dean has  _accurately_  tracked Gadreel this far in whatever time, while Sam and Cas have no clue. Dean has a couple of advantages while they focus on the angel: he knows Gadreel’s main vessel and he may even have checked his ID while leaving him at the hospital, he could use that as a lead and follow his movements somehow - there’s also the fact Gadreel smashed everything at the bar re-possessing the guy, so depending on how that got reported (esp. if the vessel is reported as a missing persons) he’s got as far as the last known location of this bloke.

I’m of the opinion that this episode is the best use of detective!Dean on the show just for the MAIN stuff that happens with Cain & Dean realising Crowley played him, so plonking him in this bar has an unspoken message of how dang good at finding things Dean is before a word is spoken.

Anyway with the split storylines, we have Sam n Cas going for one “part” of Gadreel and failing, and Dean going for the other “part” of him and failing. A strong message for TFW working together just in the symbolism - obviously these dead ends don’t turn into a good way to catch him together, but the split search being useless on both fronts represents their need to work together nonetheless.

* * *

Last episode I realised Gadreel was maybe being intentionally written as in love with Dean - now I’m seriously looking, and knowing their interaction runs as far as Dean stabbing him in 9x22 I’m wondering hard. Crowley’s line emphasises Dean is checking out the bartender because Gadreel wasn’t there - in the bar his vessel worked, so he would have been in the exact same position as the waitress if Dean had made it in time - and he’s checking her out as a, idk, stood up by his intended quarry rebound? 

(there was a lot of good meta about both disease and drug stuff to go with the Mark of Cain arc over season 9 so I won’t go into it too much over this rewatch, but season 5, obviously about angel possession, made a link between VD and possession for Sam’s bizarre arc of having the clap and herpes 2 episodes running, right in the first stretch of MotW where they’re all coming to terms with the themes of the season, and Gadreel, especially as a villain in the first half of this season, is linked strongly to Lucifer - anyway, so this could be a “sure you’ll find SOMETHING in that waitress but not the angel you’re looking for” :P which again with the emphasis on what Dean is looking for here, sexualises his search for Gadreel by linking what he’s looking for in both her and Gadreel). 

* * *

Also re: stuff from last episode, me talking about how Crowley twists this type of exchange into a flirtation:

> [DEAN startles and draws the demon knife from his jacket]
> 
> CROWLEY  
> At least buy me a drink first.
> 
> DEAN  
> I said the next time I see you –
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Dead. Yes, rings a bell, but let’s not dwell on the past, shall we?

This time it’s not the death threats so much as the joke about getting stabbed. Since this episode has introduced the First Blade with the Cain flashbacks (and how those end up with him stabbing Colette in the stomach) we’re now in the arc all about this magical phallus (some symbolism is ridiculous in this season especially contrasted against Abaddon as this dark mother figure, like 9x17 where we have her as the mother superior nursing all her souls in womb-like jars while Dean’s off being told he’s virile while he works up the nerve to go stab her… so yeah… (I honestly don’t know how it’s pulled off for good or bad, because Dean vs Abaddon probably should not have been resolved in a Buckleming episode for it to make sense or to land the metaphors >.>) but there’s something up here and in the well-written episodes it’s fascinating…) aaanyway Crowley lampshades it almost before it begins by turning this moment where Dean threatens to stab him by pulling out his knife under his jacket and holding it threateningly low in his lap, as basically just a proposition. 

Oh wait yeah and then I went back up and wrote the previous point so there’s also the comment I made about Dean stabbing Gadreel.

Honestly, though, pinning Crowley to a wall with an angel blade in 11x02 as well.

He let him finish his tea first that time :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> Never heard of it. Can I kill you now?

I’m starting to feel like Dean knows he won’t put his money where his mouth is already, even if the Dean of this episode is a fairly unique version of the character (he’s pre-Mark but in a way like he’s completely ready to BE that Dean, drinking with Crowley, extremely dangerous in a fight, the stubble all in place…) he’s kind of caught in this in between state, and aside from the indecisiveness just from that, like I was saying last episode, he forsakes everyone who he cares about but Crowley is immediately  _tempting_  because he’s Crowley. Dean barely cares about him enough to kill him, and his “I’m poison” speech holds no sway over this relationship when it comes to fear of hurting Crowley. There’s something sarcastic and self-hating nonetheless even in talking to Crowley about wanting to associate with him:

> DEAN  
> You want to hunt? With me?

The mention of John takes Dean off his guard and ready to hear Crowley’s story at least to the end of the paragraph just because new info about John. 

Dean’s face though when he says this response…

I was saying how hunting with Cas had pretty much become a metaphor for dating, back in 9x06 (and 9x09). The “family business” part of it is becoming stretched to incorporate the “family don’t end in blood” extras, like Cas’s hunter arc since 8x08. Now Crowley is joining in on the family business, asking for access to the journal etc - later he has that line about how they’re practically family because he’s been inside Sam - facetious but underneath that the truth he’s not telling Dean about how he saved Sam and fought hard for him and even offered kindness bravery above and beyond what anyone would believe of him or he’d ever WANT to admit to. But like I was saying at least to the viewer though maybe not fully to Dean yet he is earning his dubious “family” points.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> I’ve been chasing that blade for decades. The closest I got to it was when one of my droogs – Smitty – got wind of a protégé demon of Abaddon’s who claimed knowledge of the blade. Sadly, before Smitty could nab the guy, a hunter by the name of John Winchester nabbed the protégé. 

Crowley’s story not matching up to what Dean deduces later about him having known more about Cain all along - while missing the “became a demon” line being significant unless it haunts him much deeper in the season. Crowley mentions the blade was used by the archangels which seems to be the official line on it, but I think while Crowley may have missed out on physical leads, he  definitely got the info somewhere over these decades about Cain.

I’m assuming this is implying he’s had issues enough with Abaddon in the distant past - their timelines in Hell overlap with a couple of centuries I think? Between Crowley going to Hell, and Abaddon disappearing into a time portal.

Makes me wonder if Robbie was thinking of Crowley collecting the Colt back in season 3 - like a year and a half before Lucifer was ever a problem. Crowley had a retconned interest in it which supplanted Lillith’s desire to get the gun away from Sam and Dean for her own safety aka what we thought happened to it for that time while Crowley wasn’t a named character, to Crowley intervening or dealing over her head to get it as it’s not that he got it after Lilith died, but that Bela gave it to him all along. 

I’m guessing this all implies that Crowley has been stockpiling in case of emergency - this episode we also learn he has warehouses of random spell ingredients & 11x15 shows us he has storage lockers in the John Winchester style too - and Abaddon very much is the sort of emergency he’d want to be prepared for, as pre-time travel she must have been one of the scariest things in Hell and especially when he was King of the Crossroads, they’d have occupied completely opposite ends of the demonic spectrum between Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil, and him no match for her in a fair fight.

* * *

Idk how much the John Winchester stuff has been talked to death in this episode, but there’s a hierarchy here of Crowley’s minion Smitty, Abaddon’s minion, and now the 3rd character with info representing the 3rd party, Dean’s part in this as John’s son who happens to have the “memorial library” in his pocket and nothing more that Crowley’s after. Aka, he’s not ~hunting with Dean~ he’s using him as a resource and making it obvious Dean is a minion too just to play on his issues. Crowley representing one of the top tier characters, Dean a rung below, so he’s very very cleverly manoeuvring himself into a place akin to John.

I’ve discussed Crowley tangentially to this many times, but because of Dean’s family issues & repression, it’s like no good seduction should be attempted without going for at least a 2 pronged approach (”[I should be your brother](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/147765511673/ive-been-seeing-arguing-about-the-siren-episode)”) and this one is so successful because Crowley knows what he’s doing and plays brother, lover, father and bestie whichever way the wind is blowing - this discussion covers a lot about Dean’s need to repress into family when it comes to Cas:

<http://awed-frog.tumblr.com/post/148578753567/ur-right-about-the-car-scene-but-dean-did-think>

* * *

Honestly nothing like a bit of Drowley to make Destiel seem very healthy and un-fucked up, Dean’s woeful sense of self about it included.

* * *

> DEAN  
> None of your business.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> You’re gonna play hard to get? We have time for a montage?

Just in case it wasn’t obvious they were beginning their history of snarky angry dates in sketchy bars, some more innuendo \o/

(And Crowley still messing with the red carnation… I remember the good old days when the meta was that it was suggestive of a seduction metaphorically for Dean’s descent arc. Simpler times. Before Dean and Crowley literally hooked up.)

Of course Dean may think he’s playing hard to get and Crowley may get strung along way more than he ever intends to right now, but Dean actually folds depressingly easily to agree to the job because Crowley is offering a distraction and work, and the spectre of an unfinished job from John, even if it’s also a much more importantly unfinished job from Crowley, regresses Dean back to the blunt little instrument mindset very easily. Season 1 has several cases prompted entirely from the contents of the journal and I think it’s a very deliberate choice from Robbie to kick this arc off by calling on that. Season 1 showed it was pretty much instinct for Dean to respond to coordinates or coded messages in the journal or whatever - MANY times Sam blew up at him for this instinct and in Scarecrow Dean manages to tell Sam he’s actually jealous he can think for himself over stuff like that.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Oh, yeah. Here it is.

Dean knows exactly what he’s looking for in the journal because he memorised it all the way back in season 1. It’s the little details where he’s extremely competent this episode that make it my fave Dean episode, just because… well… it actually knows who Dean is :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> And how do I know this isn’t a trap?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> You…don’t. That’s what makes it fun.

[Originally posted by the-star-wars-universe](https://tmblr.co/ZnsoUo1761_Kn)

Just not how Dean thinks. :P

* * *

Could probably write forever on Crowley representing a sort of thrill-seeking no consequences fling for Dean which 10x01 may show best, but starts here.

…

Starts back in season 5 just in their dynamic, starts being his actual arc here :P

* * *

…. probably a novel to write about that too.

What a token protest while going to do the thing anyway. Making a point to himself he’s rejecting the seduction and won’t fall for it - and acknowledging what Crowley was doing in the first place…

But Crowley doesn’t see the gesture. He just sees Dean falling hook line and sinker. And, you know, wins this season in the long run because Dean doesn’t fight more than token protests all the way down :P

* * *

Cas and his PB&J!

Which I have already talked about repeatedly and especially in 9x03 where I already talked about it thematically to Cas’s humanity arc. So I guess, let’s just write down Cas expressing nostalgia for humanity which he had to give up and is now reflecting on the less shitty parts of it and realising he has given up the experience now in favour of achieving other goals, so again in a concise moment expressing his entire character conflict over the humanity arc, especially where he is on the other side of being human.

The fact Cas was sitting alone in the Bunker waiting for Sam, and decided to just go wander around digging in their shelves in the kitchen and make himself a sandwich though. I mean, compared to my comments about what Dean did off-screen between episodes that’s pretty boring, but I like it :P In 11x18 he’s strongly aligned with the kitchen, and while we don’t see the kitchen here, he had to have been in there to get the PB&J materials, even if he moved to the war room to eat it. (Which has its own significance that Cas is ready for war not domesticity, see also: all the stuff I was saying about his new uniform, grace, etc, and the reason WHY he’s changed himself so he can’t enjoy PB&J any more)

One of the things about Cas and his “make yourself at home” moments is they often are around Sam as well or even exclusively – 11x06 he’s in Sam’s room watching TV and Sam encourages him in 11x04 to watch TV in the first place and is the Cas Wrangler all through the start of season 11, telling Dean where Cas is and what he’s doing.

I get the feeling that with Dean Cas is happy to do or be whatever, and especially as the ideal such as what was established in 9x10, Cas already belongs with Dean. But when it comes to the TFW home in the Bunker dynamic, Cas needs to be emphasised bonding with the missing links – mostly Sam, but we see him maybe next to Dean at the dinner table, but interacting with Charlie in 10x18, etc – just giving an idea of Cas being part of a wider thing. 

This is Cas and Sam’s big episode, for bridging the huge gap in the dynamics of TFW, after season 8 purposefully put a wedge between them, and they’re now free to come out the other side and start forging a closer relationship (and by 9x18 I’m certain that shipper!Sam is now a thing, after Sam conquers step one – his jealousy of Cas as a rival brother, and starts seeing things a bit clearer when he reflects on what that relationship might be without his bias. See also: Dean n Cas on the phone at the start of the episode and Sam’s reaction :P)

… anyway this episode does some serious work in fixing Sam n Cas, and I think I’ve had anons before reacting to me commenting about this; I think in many ways it’s hard to know that Sam n Cas was a severely broken dynamic before now because it has many times seemed great on the surface and it fooled me for many rewatches to not realise how stuff was simmering deep down in Sam and that 8x23 didn’t come out of nowhere – Sam had a 1 episode bounce back to reach out to Cas after he broke his wall, for example, and as soon as Cas was back in the story he fixed Sam’s hell trauma as a top priority and made things right. So they act well by example and acknowledge their friendship or the importance of their presence in teamwork, etc etc, frequently.

But there’s a lot broken between them – and not like it’s ALL better from this point, as the end of season 10 shows, though season 11 finally has no noticeable emotional rift and uses Sam’s emotional closeness to Cas throughout the season in a very good way that goes with the established good stuff in their dynamic in contrast to the Destiel side of things where they’re still working out a lot of stuff as their relationship obviously has so much more going on.

(I just noticed literally while on this paragraph the next part of this meta series is posted:

<http://k-vichan.tumblr.com/tagged/the-triangle>

Which I think goes really well into the TFW dynamic in a way I agree with deeply so that’s kind of where I’m coming from with Sam n Cas this episode… But I know it’s been controversial for me to say they’re even on a healing arc starting here, or that they cleared a hurdle in the way of true friendship which has been friend-blocking them for 5 seasons or whatever :P)

I’ve said a few times along the way that Gadreel represents as well Sam’s subconscious desire to exile Cas and keep Dean to himself, per 8x23, as Sam’s neediness for Dean is still a theme which is actively on the table for character development (11x20 in the mist, 11x23 Dean appointing Cas Sam’s new guardian, the whole, rightful concern he has about that, & then of course Sam acting with nothing to lose & getting shot at the very end, the defining end of his season moment all about still not being able to lose Dean but at least by that point with a space in it carved FOR Cas as the Dabb-definition 3rd wheel) & of course this right now is just on the other side of Sam ejecting Gadreel and the next thing they do is he and Cas hang out & reconcile, so that metaphor speaks very clearly and obviously to me about Sam being in a place of healing and readiness to accept Cas that he’s never had before, as he literally exorcises a manifestation of that dark side of himself that would WANT to exile Cas.

* * *

> SAM [slaps his hand away]  
> You’re a terrible liar.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> That is not true. I once deceived and betrayed both you and your brother.

I feel like I’ve talked recently about Cas vs lying but yeah long form deception for the greater good vs something that troubles him but a white lie would be socially acceptable are a world of difference :P

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Maybe we should call Dean. 
> 
> SAM [moves away and sits down on a chair]  
> No. He wanted to go, and he’s gone. We’ll handle this.

Again, the episode is very pro-TFW by emphasising how they SHOULD be working together on this. Even though both sides follow leads that go nowhere, they have no support for each other.

this cuts to another scene of Dean working with Crowley, showing not just that Sam n Cas are trying to complete something that Cas thinks Dean should be there to help with, but that without them Dean is quickly going down a bad path.

(Although in the longer run I think for Sam and Cas both, learning to function without Dean’s endless leadership role is good for them AND him. After all they had this fight because of Dean making decisions that affected both their lives, denying them choice, etc. Cas’s response to an uncertain situation being to immediately involve Dean to help them/decide stuff for them isn’t great for his own personal development, and of course Sam is heavily under Dean’s shadow)

* * *

John has a motorbike in his storage locker, and I instantly want Dean to ride it. Argh. Why is Robbie doing this to me, first 9x04 and now this…

(I know, this is the old storage locker from Bad Day At Black Rock but we didn’t HAVE to force them to rebuild a portion of the old set :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Listen to me. We are the furthest thing from family. You got that, dickbag? 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Oh, yeah. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Now, you want to hunt? Let’s hunt.

I don’t even know where to start :P Maybe Dean giving Crowley the “what’s family anyway?” talk in 10x17? Or shall I just laugh at him saying that and then in the next breath saying they’re hunting together, you know, the good old family business.

here and now it’s a really bad thing what Crowley’s doing because he’s playing on Dean’s insecurities and family issues and Sam in the previous scene has underlined how he and Dean have cut themselves off from each other, so Dean, whose compass turns to family all the time, is left vulnerable and alone and of course immediately starts filling the void with Crowley, a worst case scenario which pretty much tells us more about Dean’s abandonment issues and need for family than anything.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> So, what do you call this decor, anyway? Rustic obsessive? Paranoid deco?
> 
> […]
> 
> CROWLEY  
> I guess the “T” didn’t stand for terrible father. 

Crowley hanging around stating the bloody obvious… Dean doesn’t give his words a whole lot of attention, just ignoring the “terrible father” thing entirely to focus on why they’re really there. John’s presence again is an important part of what’s going on here, and Crowley criticising may be pretty satisfying to a viewer, since he is a mouthpiece for uncomfortable truths, but to Dean it’s further stuff unsettling him as John and his terrible parenting is one of the foundations to Dean, and he’s already had a ton of his foundations kicked out from under him by leaving Sam and Cas behind.

There’s quite a season 3 vibe with John’s storage lockers returning (we had Castle Storage visibly in 9x06 behind Abaddon) and these specifically phrased criticisms of John + season 3 vibes take me straight to the dream episode, and that rare time Dean managed to express this for himself. I think he even called John “obsessive”… Also I think this is not the first time I’ve mentioned 3x10 in the last run of episodes – I think at some point there were comments about looking in a mirror which of course goes with other stuff demon!Dean accused Dean of in that episode about hating his own reflection.

Like maybe not all of this registers with Dean, but it’s creating an uncomfortable landscape around him even on top of all the maintext crap going on :P

* * *

I love episodes where Cas hangs out in the bunker reading books and scowling at weird Enochian translations.

Uh

Anyway it does amuse me that Sam has to explain to Cas what that means – I’m sure Cas knew full well but Sam wants a chance to explain it and Cas was not getting to the point very clearly because that criticism of flowery enochian clearly reflects on him too. :P

(This reminds me of the bizarre fandom argument I once came across about if Cas could read or not, which Cas wandering around with a book in this moment was used to say “uuuh why are we having this argument?” but honestly it’s completely overridden any thoughts about idk symbolic other meanings about grace getting left behind etc)

(which is something I saw discussed way back when as an explanation of what the Mark of Cain might be, since this was raised in the same episode, and all we knew at this point was that it came from Lucifer… In the long run, seeing it as a shred of Amara makes some sense since she said she literally was the Mark, so it’s nice this speculation/theory plays out in any way from the original attempts to understand what was going on?)

* * *

The folder of secret forbidden angel research is under Haggerty’s name and honestly after hearing he dealt with fairies etc I am 0% surprised. He seems like the most interesting MoL there is for weird research :P

(It probably would have been neater to stick in a cameo name drop for the real name of the MoL guy who ended up with the First Blade but I’m not arguing with Robbie referencing his own episodes…)

Although tbh most of the MoL did super weird experiments so it could have been any of them 

* * *

But they never had a guinea pig

* * *

I will always admire Sam (Jared, too) for straight-facing it through that exchange and looking Cas dead in the eye for 5 seconds before he says “me, Cas.”

* * *

> DEAN  
> Yeah. Hope so. John Winchester ring a bell? I’m his son.
> 
> TARA  
> You Sam or Dean?
> 
> DEAN  
> Dean.

It’s not easy abandoning your family and going solo when literally everyone knows you as part of a pair.

Dean tries to claim that legacy of “I’m his son” as if there’s just the one of him, but Tara immediately has to go and remind him that’s not how he works and he’s always going to be more than just Dean.

Also being introduced sort of “through” John again puts the emphasis on being a son, aka probably important in an episode titled “First Born” (I discussed this a lot in the season 6 fairy episode because of course I did.)

* * *

There’s so much going on here but I’m pretty confident in my tag or others’ blogs you will easily find any advanced discussion on Tara calling Dean pretty, or her knee twinging when he says his name and then she says it happens because demons (whatever was planned or not) & so on.

I hope people covered the red to blue gradient behind Dean & Crowley in this scene, just on principle. (usually conflict colours but hey also bi if you tip your head sideways :P)

* * *

Tara asks if he’s still in the family business, and again the emphasis on “family” while Dean is isolated and vulnerable and going down a path to become one of the things they hunt from the family motto he coined back in 1x02.

* * *

Dean tries twice to call Crowley associate, but

> DEAN   
> Tara listen, my, uh, associate –
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Friends – besties, actually.

Dean is having issues labelling what Crowley is to him. Crowley has a few ideas, and of course in the surface text, like with how he’s tried supplanting Sam & John already, this is him supplanting Cas from the “bestie” pedestal though of course the lovers subtext has already begun, we’re a far cry for Crowley mournfully talking about bromances and sailed ships in season 11 with a full understanding between him and Dean of what he’s alluding to :P

It’s probably safer to come at Cas’s place at Dean’s side from this direction for now anyhow.

* * *

> [TARA grabs a bottle of holy water and splashes it in DEAN’s face. DEAN looks very annoyed.]
> 
> DEAN  
> See? I’m good. Okay?

Aurghghgh

(Also the fact it’s a novelty for them to be hanging out with the King of Hell to make her suspicious. I wonder at this point what the Winchesters’ reputation is. In 9x02 they had to update other hunters on angels, but since then Dean was a demon himself :P Jesse and Cesar had the impression the Winchesters had been dead a long time, off the hunter grapevine which seems to deal mostly in rumours, but obviously they still have others who are in contact with them and would know better… In season 12 apparently we’re getting an episode with hunters hanging out together so maybe it’s time to find out how all these recent arcs have been a PR disaster for the Winchesters or not – do they know now that the Winchesters have Crowley on speed dial? Does Crowley have any OTHER hunters on speed dial? :P)

* * *

> TARA   
> Your dad thought he was lying, trying to save himself. We took him out, and we had a lovely weekend together. Then we went our separate ways. 

Oh yeah Tara is an older Mary parallel if she stayed a hunter which is FASCINATING now with hindsight of 11x23 and season 12 looming – she’s blonde and therefore John’s type (because pfft) – to John she’d have been probably just a hook up in that respect but she’s obviously always been smart, competent, and clearly a specialist at the really tough job of demon hunting, so basically if John never knew Mary was once a hunter, Tara represents the ideal who could look after herself when it came to demons and was skilled even more than John was about them, helpful for tracking and interrogating demons. Basically, someone who would not get killed by them like his ~innocent victim wife~

Of course NOW we can come at her from a Mary direction instead. She does represent a dark eventuality of Mary’s life if she’d stuck at it and not been killed off, and maybe never even gone civilian. Although I’d guess this actress is older than Sam Smith she’s probably around the age Mary would be if she hadn’t gone and died, or maybe a bit younger? (it’s hard to tell on TV because make up etc although they’re not trying to make Tara look at all dolled up and you can see the lines on her face – this is mostly me being bad at maths to work out how old Mary SHOULD be in season 9) but anyway she has this whole quest about the blade, that she spent her life pursuing, and her messed up knee etc, and she ends up being killed by demons because of their paths crossing again. And obviously there’s nothing maternal about her, she seems hard as nails and always reminded me of the 1-armed army surplus shop guy in the Simpsons. Specifically, this is the job a retired veteran does who still has some of the fight in them even if they’re out of the battle.

Anyway next season Mary’s going to be a lot younger and even with everything she’s been through less battle-hardened, but the comparison exists already between her and Tara and especially as her hunter side will be explored, I suppose this mirror character is interesting. Especially as John would have come to her for help seeking Azazel not Abaddon and of course Mary’s experience is with Azazel too, but like Tara she’s got to give up that quest, though Dean has already handled it for her like 10 seasons ago at this point :P

* * *

Heh after she agrees to help them I guess she closed the shop or something in a brief time skip to get the folder, because the lights are off in the window = no more conflict colours because they’ve won her co-operation

* * *

> TARA   
> But I could never let the blade go. Something like that could really give a hunter an edge, you know? 

Urggggh

Too much of an edge :P also “I could never let the blade go” is really ominous for the Gollum-like possessiveness over it

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> I can help. Dean?
> 
> DEAN  
> He wants Abaddon as dead as I do.
> 
> TARA  
> If your daddy could see you now.

I do wonder if John would have happily worked with Crowley to get Azazel – the whole “consumed with revenge” thing over high-minded saving the world & purifying it of all evil no matter what. Season 1 strongly painted Sam and John in one light over this, vs Dean’s more idealistic ideas of saving people (which, uh, see the end of these notes for where that takes him :P), and tried to tell us a lot about John’s ruthlessness. 

Evil seemed so simple back then that the blurriness between general killing evil and revenge was huge – now Crowley has plenty of space to be on their side against greater evils or to be enabling revenge quests and so on, while the early seasons didn’t offer that sort of character – it wasn’t until season 3 with Ruby that it was a thing and even then of course in that season she was extremely antagonistic even when she was literally saving their lives and Dean especially was angry right back at her, and never wanted to work with her. But Sam, the more pragmatic, revenge-driven character at the time, was tempted to work with her and won over by her exclusive info etc. It’s easy to see John as a beacon against evil even if he was a dick in many other respects, but he did deal with Azazel so I think there’s plenty of room to headcanon that Tara is making an assumption based off a very black and white world view – especially if the wider hunting community never knew how John died.

(This also tangentially has made me wonder about Sam’s vendetta against Crowley being a sort of reaction to his earlier mistakes… Obviously in season 8 I talked a lot about him reacting strongly against Benny because he sees his own trust of Ruby in Dean having a monster buddy… But Crowley gets the Ruby seduction and betrayal arc with Cas in season 6 and Dean in season 9 (hm, and Ruby got Sam in season 3 – does that mean Mary’s got something coming in 12? :P) so Sam is very rightfully placed to see that working with Crowley is a terrible idea and to want to kill him on principle in MANY situations before this, while Dean has generally, aside from 6x04, as far as I’ve kept track of, been one to spare Crowley or hear him out. Anyway Sam’s been there done that got the t-shirt long before the rest of his family)

* * *

in the here and now Tara’s line is yet another jibe at Dean that upsets his emotional state and is specifically about family and rejection of, in this case a warning John would probably disown him

(and for working with and supporting Crowley, who, of course, Dean’s starting a ~romance~ with this episode… HMMM *rubs chin thoughtfully*)

I mean there’s a billion reasons John would disapprove of Drowley before he ever got to the gay part :P

* * *

> TARA  
> You know, even if that blade is real, it ain’t worth being bosom buddies with the King of Hell.
> 
> DEAN  
> Abaddon? Way worse. I’ll deal with Crowley after. Trust me.
> 
> TARA  
> You sound just like your dad… when he said he’d call me.

comparing her hook up to John to Dean working with Crowley??? Another “Dean won’t kill him” moment, or is this about the not calling each other part, because Crowley spends a good chunk of the following episodes not picking up his phone…….

anyway, she points out the Real Problem and Dean ignores that and hey guess what you’re gonna be a demon by the end of the season thanks to Crowley’s meddling, should have listened to Army Surplus Mom.

* * *

She’s actually selling old radios, aka communication breakdown

* * *

How do they even KNOW the first blade is in the US? They just drop a map down and go for it. Maybe Tara knew a bit more about Cain since the time she and John worked together, but she certainly doesn’t share anything

> TARA  
> Missouri. Figures.

Oh yeah that was very obvious :P

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> I feel something dark. 
> 
> DEAN  
> What, darker than you?

You’re dark.gif

… Dean isn’t great at these insults and it’s my favourite thing about him

* * *

Crowley maaaagically knows who it is on sight, which fair enough Cain knows who  _he_  is and the whole demon bathroom walls thing, but they sure did find the farm easily, and I have learnt to trust exactly nothing Crowley does in this episode :P Dean calls him out on his freak out over Cain e.g. the shaking teacup, but I think it starts the moment Crowley is like “oops father of murder spidey sense tingling”

* * *

*lingering shot of the beehive window just in case we hadn’t gathered bees were important to Cain* 

In this case, firmly pacifism.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Why don’t you just zap out of here? 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> I’d never leave my domestic partner in crime.

I’d say this episode is hideously un-subtle except canon Drowley took us all by surprise anyway :P

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Well, after Cain killed Abel, he became a demon. 
> 
> DEAN  
> What do you mean “became a demon”?

He means maybe you should pay attention :P

I think Cain later says or implies that he became a demon after attempting to kill himself, e.g. the same route Dean went with getting stabbed but only coming back with black eyes (or… I’m confusing this with the conversation in the Avengers about Bruce Banner doing similar) but this basically skips the middle man and links “killed brother” to “became demon” which while it isn’t what Dean does, connecting the two things is pretty significant for other episodes especially 10x03, as I’ve always felt that there was an implied compulsion in there, especially when this was between Lucifer vs Michael, Cain vs Abel and then Dean vs Sam – the Amara vs God thing, obviously she tries to kill him to but it’s really blurry over season 11 if she really meant to kill him all along or if she genuinely did just want to talk and maybe take it out on Creation a little but not, like, end the universe completely. At least assuming her essence seeping through has no consciousness behind it, just that primal rage against her sibling, then I guess it works as an interpretation that the Mark and its corruption are closely tied to this. So Dean holds off and tries not to kill Sam as long as possible and especially in the last half of season 10, doesn’t go for Sam again and manages to keep it mooostly together until shit hits the fan, especially after Cain warns him that fratricide is the one way ticket to moving beyond any redemption. And in this episode he already comments on Dean not killing Sam earlier.

* * *

In the meantime he’s being a total sweetie worrying about bees and their effect on keeping mankind in existence and all – the fact he’s a beekeeper is genuinely doing good by humanity.

* * *

There’s that deer statue on his mantelpiece – not sure if it’s the exact same one we keep seeing around – there’s one in Metatron’s office with long horns that everyone was pointing at suggesting it was an impala :P

* * *

*Crowley glances non-too-subtly at Dean when he brings up the archangels killing the knights of Hell* Yeah he knows :P This is almost like Cas or Sam communicating across the Gadreel divide earlier in the season, with Dean in the role of Crowley, looking nervously between them like “crap the lie is going to be busted by someone who actually knows what happened” (aka this is part of Dean’s direct karma for that scenario having it paid back on him) - it helps that John and Tara had this info so Crowley only lied by omission but I think it may be more common knowledge than Dean realises, especially if Cain is “retired, not dead” when it comes to info and can even know who he is.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Hey, listen, pal. We’re not leaving here without the Blade.
> 
> CAIN  
> You have quite a reputation, Dean. I see the part about you being brave rings true.

Have you ever wondered what demons even gossip about? :P Apparently there are a lot of parts to this. I’m assuming hang ups about Sam are a good part of it, and demons tend to know the latest plot twists.

Okay I’ll admit it I’m still hung up on the Spanky the demon comment from 8x01, they definitely talk about how Dean’s kinda gay sometimes :P

(I’d assume, seriously, from the various way we see demons try and play on their insecurities over the years, the Winchester handbook for how to insult them covers most of their obvious personality traits, and Crowley is using a dozen different ways to undermine and manipulate Dean this episode)

* * *

> CAIN  
> If your friend here could talk, he would tell you that I trained the Knights of Hell. I built that entire demonic order with my own hands – Abaddon included.
> 
> DEAN [turns indignantly on CROWLEY]  
> Well, that is information I could have used five minutes ago!

The best bit is how Crowley played it off like he would have told Dean if only his tongue hadn’t been literally tied, instead of how he was intending for Dean to never find out any of the sensitive information :P

Dean is so absorbed in the story, he doesn’t stop to think about what Crowley is or isn’t telling him quite yet, at least in the way of what ELSE is Crowley hiding from him and IS he being manipulated (he’ll get there :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> But you said the First Blade was our only shot at killing Abaddon. This is the closest you’ve been to it. We’re not leaving.

Crowley playing up wanting to just bugger off and leave also plays to Dean’s reckless brave streak that Cain just complimented him on, and Dean’s ability to process all this is hampered by Crowley giving him a problem to solve, aka his motivation outweighs Crowley’s “fear” of Cain and therefore Dean’s gonna harp on that and throw them back into this regardless of consequences, or some very necessary self-reflection

* * *

Meanwhile Cas is practicing not smiting Sam:

> CASTIEL  
> Sam, may I ask you a question? 
> 
> SAM [Jokingly]  
> You just did. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Can I ask you another question?
> 
> SAM  
> Well, technically, you – yeah, go ahead

  


I think all the weird teams for this episode need to work on their communication skills a little :P

* * *

They are coming from actually up the main balcony back down into the Bunker… We know the store room is not there because we see Dean running through the corridors in 11x11 to it, and we know Sam n Cas are heading to the infirmary, so there’s something ELSE, where they get the grace extracting thingy from, up the main stairs… I guess the Bunker is an endless place of mystery :P I can’t even remember if we saw a door up there in the very rare angles we’ve had of it

* * *

Uh, thinking of communication skills, Sam n Cas end up fighting and Cas is basically arguing on Dean’s behalf, or, erm, devil’s advocate in this discussion.

He raises the really good points you could use to logic Sam about his side of the fight (doesn’t matter, Sam’s hurt anyway) but it forces Sam to backpedal out loud about having wanted to live, and to say he should have died closing the gates of Hell no matter what he and Dean agreed after – he doesn’t *just* say that Dean violated his consent, but sort of has that trauma cast back on everything that happened to him at the end of season 8 and how he feels about it.

It shows one of the problems just of Cas having spent so much time only with Dean or kind of drifting in his direction when it’s the 3 of them in a room, that while he can and wants to argue on Dean’s behalf, he’s not really very good at reaching out and understanding Sam yet, though they obviously work out their side of the problem within the episode, kinda, his understanding of the situation is fairly simplistic and covers either what he could have known if he and Sam ever really got a chance to talk between 9x03 > 9x09 (but I think we saw everything on screen tbh :P) or what Dean told him about how Sam was healed and doing great and the uncomplicated:

> CASTIEL  
> You chose not to go through with them for a reason, didn’t you? You chose to live rather than to sacrifice yourself. You and Dean… You chose each other.

While even Dean’s explanation in 9x09/9x10 to Cas brings in more of a mess, of course it’s not contemplating Sam’s side at all, especially when it’s a “did what I had to do” from Dean, and he can easily sell it for his conscience of honouring this choice of Sam’s. I suppose the point here is not that Cas should have considered Sam’s pov etc, it’s more that it’s showing the direction Cas is coming at here, specifically with the problem of the imbalanced DeanCas vs Sam dynamic when it comes to Cas’s experience of the Winchesters.

Plus a good way to get Sam to blurt some really heartbreaking stuff and to show how he’s emotionally regressed as a result of the deception/violation back to how he wishes he hadn’t chosen to live (if only because that choice brought a second choice from Dean on Sam’s behalf)

* * *

Sam n Cas have literally no perception of germs and not sticking a thing that’s been in a rusty box directly into Sam. Oh god.

* * *

> SAM  
> Now…being a human means settling your debts. Let’s start balancing the books.

The funny (read: ironic/terrible) thing about Sam giving Cas human lessons, is that Cas never got a chance to do this as a human, but he made the choice, as a human, to become an angel again, in order to have another crack at fixing things with Heaven, aka to settle his debts to them however he could. >.>

* * *

Dean spots the Colette photo, AND the ring in it which he already clocked Cain fiddling with when they were chatting about killing Abaddon earlier, so detective!Dean is hard at work.

* * *

I don’t know what exactly this is supposed to be, sorry Cas your explanation is terrible:

> [CASTIEL slowly pushes the needle deeper and starts pulling back on the plunger again. Suddenly, SAM’s body lurges and he has flashbacks to images of when GADREEL was inside of him and then to some of the moments when he was performing the trials. CASTIEL pulls out the needle.]
> 
> SAM [in shock]  
> What the hell was that?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Your body is regressing to the state it was in before Gadreel.

I’m assuming he means the damage is threatening to return or something, but it’s a very weird selection of memories going right back to some of Sam’s first coughing blood moments (in 8x17, I believe, which is making me squint because that would mean Robbie’s referencing his own stuff and he usually has a good reason to do that if he didn’t just staple a napkin to this script with a vague suggestion, like he did with the design of the First Blade). 

I wonder if instead it was about the power in Sam in general as he immediately began basically charging himself up to be the human equivalent of a Hand of God with one very specific purpose, and that power was burning him up just the same way as holy power was too destructively powerful to be wielded by regular humans off in season 11. Cas needs to stick the needle in deeper and it’s specifically tuned to pick out angel grace but instead Sam flashes back through his whole progression of having holy stuff inside of him, first the God power and then Gadreel – we see that through instances of Gadreel showing his power aka taking full control of the vessel rather than lurking down somewhere quiet. I wonder if the needle is more digging down into some psychic core of Sam rather than causing physical damage it’s designed to pierce some spiritual part of him.

I wonder if, if there was an angel inside of someone still, they could use the needle to extract the grace but leave the angel behind, as a sliiightly more humane way than the throat slitting method (I’d speculated this as a way to save Cas in the past while he was still sick).

Anyway both are connected with the sort of general neck area. We know the neck is often used as a shortcut way of showing delivery of various magic-ish inflictions because we see it all the time on the show – like the “rabid” virus in 11x01/11x20 as perhaps the most significant parallel, since I’ve already talked about Sam being consumed with both Amara and Chuck’s power at various times in Carver era. (I think in either 8x14 or 8x21, jumping the gun a bit on 8x23, but maybe also in 8x17 as Cas does have a comment on how Sam’s messed up on a molecular level then)

To get back to wtf is going on with Sam, then, I think they’re missing the point of exactly what they’ve tapped into (using untested MoL equipment) and it’s not just that Sam is regressing, but that this is actively aggravating all the crap inside Sam, in the way of him practically having an allergic reaction. :P

I’m not sure where that all goes in the long term, but I know they love posing the question of if Sam still has demon blood or not as a safe teaser that never goes anywhere – Jared apparently tweeted the same question twice 2 years running about Sam. Certainly, arguing about what’s still fucked up about what’s inside Sam has been an endless source of discussion, and he rarely gets through a season without being infected or whatever – season 11 he gets 2x Darkness infection and a touch of Mark of Cain-itis for a hot minute, season 8 with the trials as a sickness which gives them a way to voice how he always feels unclean, season 9 this which turns into a medical horror story between him and Cas. I think season 10 is the only one I can’t recall anything happening to Sam like this? And then obvious the first 7 seasons all deal with one large arc for Sam about his bodily autonomy etc.

And I was left wondering (and some other people too) about if Sam had the potential to complete the trials still lurking in him, and so in 10x03 when he uses random blood to cure Dean and we don’t see the whole ritual like with Crowley (I still have complaints about that but shh) we don’t see Sam retreading those steps that could have put him in any danger of randomly up and dying after curing Dean (that… would have been a good cliff-hanger for season 10 to start with… ah, curse the formula curse :P) there were comments from several people in the fandom about if Sam still had Trial stuff in him… I don’t know if Cas could have extracted it with a needle designed only for angel grace, but their spell fails either way as well as Cas not going through with a full extraction that could have killed Sam (aka he never reached all the way past Gadreel), so it’s totally reasonable, I think, to headcanon Sam might still have that potential?

In the absolute here and now, possibly not a good thing to tell him as he’s busy lamenting that he didn’t close the gates, but perhaps with his wish he could go back and do it, leaving him on the hook with the trials represents that mindset of being ready to die for them still lurking inside Sam.

Which, obviously, is not a good thing, and continues to be a metaphor for a now very buried but still present, suicidal ideation in Sam. Which of course, as we’re building to the end of the season, leaves him in a terrible place for the hiatus, hence his nervous break between seasons.

* * *

Never ever going to get over how threatening Cain can be standing there with his grocery bag

* * *

I know probably shouldn’t, but I do feel sorry for Cain and his organic shopping and his bees and this nice little life all fucked up, as he realises quickly where this is all going. Probably once he hears all the demons are Abaddon’s he’s making some decisions, because as so much meta went over especially after 10x14 and his prophecy, he sort of “set” Dean on Abaddon in order to finish his  _own_  list – demon lover, true love interest, brother – as he’d failed to kill Abaddon so sends Dean to do it for him, in a way. They’re very clear about what they’re there for so from the start they’re offering a temptation to Cain to break his peace and solitude – in a way without the demon incursion he could have given Dean the Mark and gone back to beekeeping and known he’d eventually hear how it all shook out, but that’s never the way – the universe won’t let you just  _be_ like that. So these demons at his door are the past catching up to him hearing Abaddon’s name for the first time in centuries, and knowing Dean and Crowley spell an end

So he sets the stage for Dean’s test.

* * *

> CASTIEL [starting to remove the needle from SAM’s neck]  
> No. Why must the Winchesters run toward death?

This is literally nothing. Have you  _seen_  what your boyfriend is doing on the other side of this story?

* * *

Here, Cas actually does pretty much what Dean did in 8x23/9x01 when faced with THIS:

> SAM  
> My life’s not worth any more than anyone else’s – not yours or Dean’s…or Kevin’s. Please. Please, help me do one thing right. Keep going.

He eventually gets to “wow no fuck that you’re not dying just to sacrifice yourself even though you totally asked me and gave explicit consent for me to murder you, and this is going against your wishes to die” – he makes a call based on his own feelings about the value of life and Sam’s importance to him and to Dean (although, I mean, probably a fair amount of “how the fuck do I tell Dean I killed Sam” :P)

* * *

I like how all the demons are like “lol nope I will not touch a hair on Cain’s head I know what’s good for me” and he’s like “don’t mind me, go try and kill Dean” and it’s kind of nice :P

* * *

Aaah this is Dean’s best fight sequence, or one of them, anyway.

The 3rd demon comes through the glass of the door that Crowley just closed, before the fight starts – he’s clearly thrown in a 3rd to the mix because he didn’t feel like fighting it, and he as much as Cain is watching to see how Dean copes with it all. The 3 demons he start against are Generic Plaid Demon, Trucker Hat Bobby-esque Plaid Demon, and Blonde Mary-esque Plaid Demon. Dean kills off the trucker hat one immediately with style (revenge for Tara!), leaving a demon who’s presumably a mirror for himself, and the Mary mirror (all the blonde women are Mary mirrors I guess??) who immediately fling him down on Cain’s table like a sacrifice – mirroring how he was thrown down in 8x03 and nearly had his heart ripped out as a sacrifice. And I’ve talked a lot about how that episode unintentionally heavily foreshadows this one and the whole arc, excessively.

He stabs the Mary demon in the stomach from behind as well – that’s sort of his move I guess :P

It’s extremely BAMF and competent

Crowely and Cain both stop to watch after “you’re good but I’m Crowley” – Cain gets up to get a beer, which is initially just a gesture of how un-fussed he is about Dean trashing his kitchen and how small-fry this fight is to him, but then we have Crowley with nothing else left to fight standing watching and stroking his chin thoughtfully, and Cain sits down again and has stopped shucking corn in favour of just drinking his beer (uhoh, it’s the Margiekugel brand)

Aaand then Dean makes his sacrifice to Cain with throwing the demon down on his table and stabbing it in front of Cain.

* * *

(The award for Dean’s scariest eyes of the entire show are in that exact moment afterwards)

* * *

Do you know what the worst possible episode to watch right in the middle of this one is? Say, if you end up eating in front of the TV after abandoning this rewatch around about Dean showing up at Cain’s house?

> DEAN  
> Right. Yeah, except I didn’t kill my brother.
> 
> CAIN  
> You saved yours. Why?
> 
> DEAN  
> Because you never give up on family – ever.

*hits rewind to Born Under A Bad Sign*

> SAM  
> That’s not my point. I almost carved up Jo too. But no matter what I did, you wouldn’t shoot.
> 
> DEAN  
> It was the right move, Sam. It wasn’t you.
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah, this time. What about next time?
> 
> DEAN  
> Sam, when Dad told me … that I might have to kill you, it was only if I couldn’t save you. Now, if it’s the last thing I do I’m gonna save you. 

*clutches heart and staggers off wounded because obviously the word choice here is blatantly Robbie referencing this season 2 arc*

Mostly suffering because to me this arc – in terms of character stuff directly relating to this – culminates in demon!Dean going for Sam with the hammer and after that I’m not really sure wtf happens in season 10 but they drop the fratricide thing completely until 10x23 

I mean, from Dean’s side of things, the character development was SO IMPORTANT even if it turns him into a total asshole and we’ve already been through an incredible list of asshole things he’s done and we’re only 11 episodes into this season, my Dean!girl heart just flutters that Dean’s forced to confront such huge things? Like, season 2 completely and utterly fucks him up, and he will never ever accept takebacksies for selling his soul for Sam in 3, and then after that he mostly just lives with the damage so, and I understand this is totally not how to address this in a healthy way but for the sake of storytelling and these being fictional characters who are neeeever going to get real therapy on screen, Dean being scraped down to raw nothing and the Worst Version of himself and channelling all his rage and pain into actively trying to murder Sam? He reaches his dead on lowest point and comes out the other side of it to be painfully built back up (culminating in Mary’s return!!), and this word choice here back with Cain before Dean takes on the Mark, shows before it ever happens exactly where Dean’s trauma with Sam is – because season 2 is, I will still argue, his proportionately most fucked up year of the lot just for the way his entire world is yanked from under his feet and he’s told he may have to kill Sam and he DOES save him but only at the cost of his entire self. And there he learns what sacrifice really means, to a Winchester, to give up their entire self to the other so that they can life – which is what Sam and Cas are also dealing with over on the other side of the story, the knock-on effect of this self-sacrificing mindset and how it’s ravaged Sam’s self-worth too.

And Carver era is kind of a mess all over the place but sloooowly it challenges all these things and offers Sam and Dean both chances to examine how they’ve acted in the past and to consider their futures and what they should be… They’re still very much works in progress, but at the last minute some change did seem to sink in :P

* * *

Argh I’m probably too tired to be commenting on all this but you either get lengthy thoughts before or after an arc and this feels like a much better place to discuss this one >.>

* * *

I was about to ask how the crap Cas saw the PB&J in the war room all the way from the infirmary but you know what if they just confirmed he has x-ray vision or whatever who even cares.

What’s going on in this show

* * *

Anyway this whole Cas n Sam side of stuff is increeedibly heavy-handed and something about this being one of the core Dean episodes, and then these guys makes me feel like either Robbie just wasn’t feeling it because he was all caught up in his epic biblical nonsense going on over there and phoned in the Sastiel, or he really does disproportionately care about Dean and of all his many Dean-leaning episodes this is the worst offender because he didn’t have anything to do with the other characters except a brief exploration of forcing them to actually talk about what’s on their mind with subtlety normally only achieved by Buckleming :P

> CASTIEL  
> Sam, I want Gadreel to pay as much as you do. But nothing is worth losing you. You know, being human, it didn’t just change my view of food. It changed my view of you. I mean, I can relate now to how you feel. 
> 
> SAM  
> What are you talking about? 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> The only person who has screwed things up more consistently than you…is me. And now I know what that guilt feels like. And I know what it… I know what it means to feel sorry, Sam. I am sorry. 
> 
> SAM  
> I know.

Still gonna put a tear in my eye though

* * *

Also, this actually setting us up for real character development albeit some that’s still so far away?

> CASTIEL  
> You know, old me – I would’ve have just kept going. I would’ve jammed that needle in deeper until you died because the ends always justified the means. But what I went though – Well, that PB and J taught me that angels can change, so…who knows? Maybe Winchesters can, too.

* * *

I’m still suspicious of PB&J just because this is the 4th time it’s appeared in 11 episodes – 9x03, 9x07, 9x09 and now here. In the first 3 cases it was strongly tied to vulnerability and in a way innocence… 

There’s probably a weird metaphor for Cas reaching a sort of adulthood in his own character development by no longer tasting the childhood food of choice, which he once had when he was a helpless 3 day old human himself before being tricked and killed… Dean called him a “baby” so many times in season 6, referring to his emotional maturity, and a “child” in season 7 right after he died. When it comes to the specifically human relations stuff, Cas has been way behind even if he’s obviously not a child in many other ways… I mean, like, it’s friggin’ adorable but that gifset out there comparing that time Misha filmed himself taking West shopping vs Cas in 8x22 learning to grocery shop and you wonder where he got his inspiration from :P 

But him being compared to a toddler in a grocery store only, like, 12-13 episodes ago from here? And now Cas has reached a sort of emotional maturity and again is now basically more or less the main Cas of Carver era, since he picked up trenchcoat 2.0, who is a much more nuanced version of Cas even than the one of season 8, for all his history and trauma etc. And obviously human Cas has a few firsts like first job, first beer, whatever, so he whooshes through adolescence and re-joins them with all that life experience, gets his first car, and is on a path of personal growth that will soon be able to include Claire, which is the sort of advanced empathy he was once literally incapable of (he nearly possessed her from 4x20 to date and didn’t see anything wrong with it) but the new Cas is in a position to wonder how she’s getting on, and worry about her enough to go check, and then make it his business to care, putting himself in a quasi fatherhood, never mind talking about having a midlife crisis :P

* * *

Also he recognises that he’s changed, which I think is maybe the most important part in all this – discussing his own failings and positive development in a rational, level-headed way… TBH this whole thing sort of unnerves me to see someone on this show calmly discussing their positive character development but I suppose in non-SPN places this wouldn’t be too weird?

Amused by Cas saying angels can change but Winchesters changing is a much taller order

* * *

… also I suppose the nature of angels is vaguely in the show’s attention thanks to Gadreel and his “wrath or compassion” thing, and Cas shows that compassion can be learned as an angel – true, full compassion not just the abstract love he’s had in the past which has been very strong but sometimes especially in relating to the Winchesters, hard to translate into the deeply intense and personal ways they react to stuff? The whole “you’re just playing sorry” arc which again was in 8x22 as well, which I think underlined a lot of random “old Cas” traits to compare to the new one.

* * *

I’m so glad we got the later version of Cain’s glorious mane, because it’s so much more suitable for the character, this Cain, wandering around in 1 layer and with shorter hair, seems small and mousey and I GUESS it suits how he’s been in retirement and all but it just feels so wrong compared to seeing him in full Father of Murder rampage mode a season down the line :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> The jawbone of an animal. The jawbone you used to kill Abel because he was God’s favorite.

Favouritism kills.

Uh, I mean. More of this thing which was nearly main arc stuff with God over his favourite in season 11.

Not that Lucifer isn’t petty about favouritism and if he heard a rumour that Abel was God’s favourite he’d totally go try and ruin him out of jealousy and spite against Humanity, and if Abel was currently the Fave Human, well then Lucifer had a few ideas about what to do about that >.> (I feel like there should be a really nuanced thing about Sam aka the Abel parallel, finally having the Mark on his arm as Lucifer once tried to do, but BY God’s hand, but honestly I think we’re gonna have to wait for season 11 deleted scenes because Sam’s stuff was mercilessly cut so if ANYTHING made it though to the DVDs it could change the whole discussions about him (aside from the same rage normally reserved to how the Destiel scenes all get cut :P))

This subtly returns to Robbie’s favourite theme of the season, and of course a general Carver era thing, but he makes it extremely plot relevant here… the story being wrong or different interpretations of the story. Dean knows the Biblical tagline of the story, Cain knows it too but has his own experience, that he didn’t kill Abel out of jealousy of this simple thing, but because of much more complicated reasons… But especially with this hindsight from season 11, I wonder if you could put both stories together and build a better picture, where neither the Biblical version OR Cain  had the full story, and only getting more character development of Lucifer and God lends any better perspective to what might have been going on here from their end.

* * *

> CAIN  
> Abel wasn’t talking to God. He was talking to Lucifer. Lucifer was gonna make my brother into his pet. I couldn’t bear to watch him be corrupted, so I offered a deal – Abel’s soul in heaven for my soul in hell.

This again sounds like Cain TRIED to save his brother, with whatever terrible means necessary, but of course with hindsight the whole murder thing is really obviously the wrong way to have gone about it.

* * *

> CAIN  
> My knights and I, we did horrible things – for centuries. Bringers of  **chaos and darkness.**

… oh

* * *

Pfft then we get the flashback where Cain accidentally stabs Colette in the uncomfortably lower stomach region while trying to kill Abaddon who is blatantly portrayed as a jealous ex. Like, talk about ruining a marriage. >.>

(She joins the list of fridged women who die this specific way, of Jess and Mary – the angel discussed as setting Cas on his journey, the one from the start of 4x16, died with a stab to the chest rather than this way more suggestive/intimate kind of stabbing the love interests die from)

(Yay Mary’s back. The old language of the show is being undone :P)

Re: Colette as a jealous lover, though, after all the talk about the ~love triangle~ within TFW at the very least that’s got to carry an obvious “jealously bad” message when Abaddon’s like, “if I can’t have you no one can” and snaps Colette’s neck.

* * *

Crowley’s FACE when Dean manhandles Cain

* * *

> DEAN   
> Hey! Listen, you son of a bitch. You may be done killing, but I’m not.

Oh Dean NO

I think that line’s one of the most on the nose when it comes to this arc I picked up on here:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/147048523428/elizabethrobertajones-spn-set-re-use>

especially regarding the stuff from 2x03 about Dean being a killer or not (and again Robbie channelling season 2 – I have no idea if he knew about the set re-use but it matches the themes perfectly so someone was very smart about that) – the biggest tragedy is Dean giving up and embracing the side of himself he once tried to deny… He knew he liked the simplicity and catharsis of killing monsters he knew were evil, and then that speech at the end of 9x10 where he says all he knows he’s good for is killing evil, so 2x03 where at the end he’s like “it’s all jacked up” it challenges his worldview that he can’t just go around killing everything supposedly evil to make himself feel better because it’s morally right to do it (listen, fight me over Dean as the most fucked up Lawful Good character ever because I will die on that hill :P) and of course a better and more forgiving understanding of monsters that has room to judge them  _fairly_  is a character endgoal – which he seemed to have hit with Benny but then of course when that gets fucked up he completely regresses over the next couple of seasons, and we see him a couple of times basically hunting vampires for sport to blow off steam with the Mark in season 10 >.> 

(And all this fucked up-ness is tied together in these arcs, Benny vs the co-dependency feeds directly into Dean taking the Mark when you follow the path of terrible things that have happened to Dean or Dean’s done between the star of Carver era and here – taking his story as a whole, this break is pretty understandable even if it sucks >.>)

Anyway so that toy superhero in 9x07 who was all “I clobber evil!” is basically what Dean wants to be right now – just a big strong killing machine that can clear up all the evil in the world, leaving him as the worst thing in it.

I mean, he does hit “the worst thing in it” for a handful of episodes between 10x14 and 10x23, but only by him sinking lower (and eliminating the competition :P) rather than him improving the quality of life for everyone else.

Aah, Dean’s ironic defeats of the next few years >.>

* * *

Colette’s grave says she’s 37 which may or may not be how old Dean is right now depending on how you count all the time skips (or if you believe season 2 and 4 take like 3 weeks apiece or something, he’s younger, or if you saw the thing that suggests season 11 takes places in 2017 you’re just confused)

Anyway *links a picture of Colette and a picture of Dean with red string on my mood board on the wall and squints at it*

I genuinely don’t know the link although I am pretty sure somewhere in the reams of meta on the Colette thing, someone argued Dean was his own “Colette” so maybe that’s how

* * *

([if you hadn’t noticed I have 0 energy for this one because been there done that got the t-shirt :P](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/the-colette-conundrum))

* * *

I think her gravestone also says something like “to live in the hearts of those we love” or something

*ties more red string to a pin and jabs it into the board at random*

I think it says “In memorandum” after that but google tells me there’s a song that completes the quote with “is to never die” and TBH the whole frikkin’ “WHO IS COLETTE 2.0” fight of season 9-10 probably has a lot to say about that and honestly I’m amazed I never saw anyone go back and read her gravestone and meta this with some deep profound whatever about the full song lyrics or the history of the song or whatever, which I totally haven’t googled because *flops face forward into a pillow and screeches about the Colette fight*

* * *

Anyway Cain’s weary acceptance of “who he is” as well becoming a killer again. He’s the darkest mirror for Dean because he seems to prove everything Dean fears/hates about himself, although 10x14 and the fight there do a much better job of emotionally mauling Dean, since this is just the set up right now

* * *

I feel though, okay, just 1 thing and I KNOW I KNOW but ugh even I, a weary season 10 fandom veteran… 

so everyone makes the parallel to the fight in 10x22 where Cas is like “stop” because Colette asked Cain to stop, but there’s so much on her knowing what Cain was and loving him anyway, and CAS in 10x14 when he gets a minute of screen time alone with Cain has to confront this too (he knows how narrative mirrors work and also has x-ray vision) and then of course the whole “watch you murder the world” thing in 10x22 again

* * *

I’m sure people discussed it at least a little because season 10 and Destiel subtext was pretty much all this or doing complicated mathematics on the Drowley love triangle, but actually watching the way Cain talks about/to her is still extremely emotionally painful 

* * *

Then the episode becomes a morality tale on reading the terms & conditions – Crowley looks like he was genuinely going to interrupt maybe with a “we don’t have time for this” but Dean’s ahead of him like “nah let’s do it”

* * *

> CAIN  
> You find the blade, kill Abaddon, but make me a promise first. When I call you – and I  _will_  call – you come find me and use the Blade on me.
> 
> DEAN  
> Why?
> 
> CAIN  
> For what I’m about to do.

Interestingly Cain doesn’t do this – I was waiting for a season, but in the end obviously Cas found him first on Dean’s behalf, and Cain seems to be beyond sacrificial redemption until Dean has completely bested him in the fight, and only then does he wait to be killed with grace, perhaps remembering at the last minute that he made Dean make this promise, but until then he’s hellbent on killing Dean instead.

In the context of season 9, Dean makes another promise about someone’s life and has it put into his hands again, so of course a really really dark version of the way so many lives are trusted into his hands – now it’s not to protect or save Cain, but to kill him. The only thing he thinks he’s good for. (And as 10x14 covered, the ultimate dark version of Dean, and there’s a whole lot of the death of himself along the way… Ultimately once he gets through it all, killing dark mirrors like Abaddon and Cain are killing off the negative parts of himself so that he can heal but it’s super grim around the time of each death >.>)

* * *

I like the little detail that Cain whooshes them out and the last demon runs past Dean and Crowley without paying any attention to them.

* * *

Anyway Cas and Sam are having a nice quiet time with more gross brown location spells, but this one fails.

I feel like there should be a greater parallel than that but honestly I feel like there’s a ridiculous elephant in the room which is I’ve mentioned 10x14 a dozen times and not 11x14, because *muffled screeching into a pillow*

It’s not just Sam n Cas(ifer) hanging out, it’s Sam n Cas(ifer) casting spells together (or not), and Cas decides not to kill Sam via horrible violation of sticking something in him that fucks him up to the core, vs Lucifer just being like “LMAO okay I’ll stick my hand in you if you like” and both times Sam is so self-sacrificing but obviously Cas is like “woah okay no nothing is worth losing you” vs Lucifer betraying Sam’s trust of Cas which probably comes from  _that exact scene_  offering to let “Cas” touch his soul

Aaargh

Sam :<

Same, Cas. Same.

* * *

HUGS

* * *

Sam says “you were right about everything” – that may be most about his acceptance that maybe Cas was right not to kill him in cold blood for Gadreel’s grace, but Cas also tried to give Sam the objective Devil’s advocate POV on what Dean did to Sam, and though that fight is just beginning (oh god I never even waded to this one ever before, really, aside from a few allusions to it in longer things, but the next 2 episodes are all about it. Help) and I wouldn’t want Sam to roll over and forgive Dean which obviously he does not, but I guess Cas at least helps him see a path to eventual forgiveness

I mean shame this goes absolutely nowhere but I guess Robbie tried :P Sam n Dean sulk at each other for most of the rest of the season right up to 9x23 where Sam recants the fight in favour of “oh shit you just got stabbed” and then briefly flips over into Mystery Spot Sam before settling for “my brother tried to murder me with a hammer but at least he’s human, let’s just… repress and not talk about anything all season because I’ve learned from the best”

* * *

I mean… Probably.

* * *

I’ll get to any character nuance I missed when I get there >.>

* * *

(my memory of season 10 as a whole is terrible)

* * *

Anyway Sam n Cas hug it out – in repayment for not hugging back in 6x12, Sam just goes for it because it’s high time to show Cas he’s appreciated.

Cas makes his excuses to go because someone needs to find Metatron and this is one of the slightly more believable times Cas wanders off mostly because they have exhausted all their leads, and the real question is why didn’t Sam go  _with_ Cas at that point?

I like to think he slept for 3 days because he’s earned it, and if not for the formula curse, he’d have stuck around to help Cas instead of accidentally meeting back up with Dean >.>  

Anyway Cas is in the rare position of being in genuinely good, perhaps  _best_  emotional standing with  _both_  Winchesters at once now, right when they’re in the worst with each other, so he’s actually the middle point of TFW right now unlike how Dean has been it for the entire time they’ve known Cas. 

Sam takes a turn acting it in the middle/end of season 10 to pretty terrible results, but perhaps he just needs practice and less stressful scenarios >.>

* * *

Who am I kidding Cas and Dean need to be married all the time or I get mopey :P

* * *

Meanwhile: Dean n Crowley are married.

> CROWLEY  
> He was right, you know. You are worthy.
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, great. Now you’re gonna get all touchy-feely, too?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Your problem, mate, is that nobody hates you more than you do. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Or at least Crowley accidentally confesses his feelings

Early days.

* * *

But Dean IS letting him ride shotgun this episode which is not at all heavy-handed after 9x10 made such a big deal of it being the winning seat in the love triangle.

* * *

> DEAN  
> You knew. You knew about the mark. You knew about Abaddon and Cain. You knew all of it. And you played me. Why?

Mm I love Dean putting everything together.

A bit late, but this is impressive considering how distracted Dean was all episode. He still SAW everything even if he’s only managed to connect all the dots later, and they’re some  _impressively_ tiny details or stuff he could barely have seen except out the corner of his eye at the time. E.g. he must have recognised the demon from the bar because he was keeping a very sharp eye on everyone there even while giving the impression of stewing in self-pity and drinking when Crowley found him. Or spotting Crowley hanging back  _in the middle of his epic fight_.

* * *

> DEAN  
> After I kill Abaddon… you’re next!
> 
> CROWLEY  
> You don’t mean that. We’re having too much fun.

Aaand ending the episode as he started it, threatening to kill Crowley aka what Crowley smarmily always treats as flirting and Dean’s  _still_  doing it.

* * *

He’s so angry here just on principle about everything including Tara dying it’s basically impossible to know if the Mark affected him in any way except for making his arm feel a bit weird

He has an ominous red flashing light behind him like HEY BAD IDEA MATE

* * *

Aaand we leave him all on his own with even Crowley sent away on his errand to get the First Blade, again with Dean parked by the water like how 9x10 ended but he’s even more alone and also now actively fucking things up rather than being on the about to fuck things up precipice.

* * *

Wheee season 9.


	12. 9x12

Somewhere, off-screen: Garth humming to himself as he sews little cloth fangs into Mr Fizzles’s mouth

* * *

The recap starting with dead Kevin and ending with a brief reminder of Garth’s failure of care apparently unrelated there does accidentally bring up the point that Garth is responsible indirectly for like the entire season, just because Kevin’s disappearance and supposed death fuelled so much either indirectly by making the Winchesters emotional and erratic which affected their decisions, or directly, for example, by depriving them of a resource so they sought out Metatron. I mean, Crowley may have stayed distracted and angry if Kevin was kept from him he may have not struck out at the Winchesters and all their saved peeps from a place of strength and confidence

Good job, Garth. :P

… I mean the same argument goes for just moving him to the Bunker, but y ou know.

whatevs

* * *

Season Rusty Farm Equipment is deep underway.

In terms of aesthetics, season 9 & 10 have a much better go of it than season 8, that was pretty garish.

The problem remains that the monsters are goofy, which season 11 did a reasonable job fixing where it could (Plush, Safe House and The Chitters are all legit scary or at least don’t make the monsters cute) but somehow even in a season with Bloodlines in it, putting Garth Fitzgerald IV in a house with a ton of werewolves pretty much takes the cake. :P I know the point was the meta purpose of deconstructing what it means to be a monster and blah blah but surface level, it’s Garth, and this is a goofy episode that doesn’t fit in its own skin, with the dark rusty farm aesthetic, the BAMF emergence of Mark!Dean and the connected bro fight, and the woefully underused threat of werewolf apocalypse 

(I mean, maybe it’s a GOOD thing that didn’t become a thing, but like with Bloodlines and what it does for the show now there is just the self-contained episode, it makes too much of a thing, with hugely disproportionate stakes to the space it’s contained in, and doesn’t live up to them, because how could you when the main apocalypse took 5 seasons and Bloodlines, however goofy and terrible it would have been, was pitched as a whole show to get at least one season… It sort of feels like the show is a balloon stretching under its skin in huge bulges but the concepts are all trapped and it snaps back into place - and I don’t even particularly care to see these stories) 

* * *

The episode begins with Sam arriving first, which to me suggests at least a slight bias towards his point of view; though they’re still split up they could have used either Winchester to arrive first, but in a way it makes Sam the ~normal~ pov that we follow him in. And we walk in on Dean about to try waking Garth up via an adrenaline shot, while Sam argues for rationality that it could kill him. Dean’s actions from the instant we clap eyes on him (the first shot is just a close up of him holding a needle) are less compassionate and more brutal. Sam’s also gone the normal route of dressing up in a suit etc to get access, while Dean is just there, dressed in his regular clothes (that awful yellow-ish shirt and yet he still looks good. HOW. The season 9 scruff is unworldly) which creates the divide between Sam and Dean by having them mismatched completely - not just conflict colours within a set of roughly matched clothes but their entire wardrobe, and also suggests Dean got in by less ethical methods than the normal fake badge routine which for them doesn’t even count as a moral compromise any more until someone’s having a breakdown about the sum total of lies they lead.

* * *

> DEAN  
> I want some answers. He walked out on Kevin. He walked out on us. So if you got a better idea…

I think Dean has a similar feeling as I was saying about Garth being a root cause of their problems (again… probably not but still :P) Considering Dean’s rage trigger is Gadreel for killing Kevin, this sense of betrayal within their “family” (as the last time we saw Garth he was taking on the role of Bobby and Dean had come to accept it and allow Garth in, which would have been the path to family) it’s almost like a trial run for the Gadreel betrayal. Dean’s sense of injustice powers a lot of his anger in the same way season 4 Sam had Ruby playing on his righteousness, Dean sort of does it to himself (the 9x10 “I’m poison” speech was where I went into this in detail) and so immediately meeting someone who had “wronged” them and getting this angry reaction from Dean is an ominous sign of things to come.

And as I was saying, a whooole lot of that tracks back to Dean’s mistakes (Kevin asks him to his face to be moved somewhere safer AFTER they have the Bunker) that he’s projecting onto other people for their role in it too.

* * *

You can see Garth’s heart monitor suddenly speed up into shallower heartbeats when he says “I was on a hunt” which is a pretty neat detail to catch that he was lying. Nice work, prop people.

* * *

> SAM  
> Actually, uh, yeah. Turns out he, uh, he left some Grace in me before he bolted.
> 
> DEAN  
> You know how wrong that sounds, right?

Re: what I was saying about the bartender at the start of 9x11… I forgot until Dean points it out that there’s such an obvious link >.>

* * *

> SAM  
> Wouldn’t worry about it. Cas took care of it.
> 
> DEAN   
> Hmm.
> 
> SAM  
> What?
> 
> DEAN  
> Nothing. I’m gone for two weeks, and you’re like an episode of “Teen Mom.”

He’s so jealous. Of the both of them, I think - just that “my friends had fun when I wasn’t around” feeling. When Dean isn’t in such a crappy mood, I guess he processes this differently probably along with his realisation in 10x03 when he’s human again and sees Sam and Cas working together to save him, that Cas is extremely necessary for Sam in his own way, and hence 11x23 and urging him to stay and look after Sam - obviously not just for Sam but for Cas’s sake too, but Cas has Sam fully functioning again plus has dealt with some other random problem while Dean was gone.

I’m assuming in Dean’s analogy Sam’s the baby and Cas is the teenage mom, which goes with what I was saying last episode about Cas’s maturity & growth arc over the last few seasons.

(This is a Glass episode and I’m pretty sure he’s the one who had Dean call Cas a baby a dozen times in 6x19 so the tables have turned - now Dean’s lashing out about the responsibility of looking after Sam)

* * *

Dean explains that he has the Mark now and Sam’s eyes get more and more o.0 over the whole thing. You can  _hear_  his internal monologue like “Cain… the dude that killed his  _brother_?”

> SAM  
> You worked a job with Crowley?
> 
> DEAN  
> The devil you know…

Dean unknowingly title-drops Crowley’s second ever episode, explaining both the reasoning behind it and their LONG history of listening to and working with Crowley - and especially Dean, as he was singled out in that episode for the buddy comedy. 

* * *

Dean’s tricked by the phonecall as if thinking Sam is far away - he lies to him about having a lead from the video, hoping to split off and work alone again and send Sam away. The last shot of Sam in his scene at the farm ends with the overlap of the sound of Dean’s ringtone, making a suggestion that Sam has phoned from the farm, but of course he’s lurking near enough the Impala to catch Dean out and see the photos for himself. *we* get tricked like Dean into thinking Sam is far away by the way the phonecall moving us between scenes.

I guess this episode punts us between brothers and leaves us to work out for ourselves who we think is behaving worse. They clearly aren’t functioning as a unit like normal, and the storytelling is showing that all over the place.

* * *

Oh wait, and I just scrolled past a Destiel gifset which conveniently reminded me that I burst out laughing when Sam and Dean run into each other while they’re still talking on the phone, because there’s tension and then there’s… tension. Sam and Dean’s angry strop is on another planet from whatever the fuck was happening between Dean and Cas that time. :P

* * *

Hey here’s Garth’s weird werewolf wife. Befitting wives on the show she’s blonde, and comes in a comfy sweater variation to make her look more harmless since we first see her fangs out. It’s a safe beige colour because there are 0 associations to do with beige in the character colour schemes of the show.

She did leap out of a closet as well. This episode is fairly bland and heterosexual & traditional family values but ~lol werewolves~ so idk what to do with that (it’s TOO bland and wholesome so the subversion feels pretty much just like it’s attacking that aesthetic and leaves me sliding off the too-shiny sides), but she does have that going for her :P

* * *

I know a fair amount has been written about Garth’s descriptions of Sam and Dean – especially the show’s own language for “big old teddy bear” causing war flashbacks to the time Sam and Dean were teddy bear doctors, and that drama that actually made the bear a frighteningly and depressingly good mirror to Dean – Dean being a teddy bear is quite clearly a double meaning, and it’s context-dependent on knowing the show and its memorable moments. We know Dean can be a wuv-hugs kind of teddy bear but there’s a darker, larger bear in his personality and it’s currently the one piloting the ship.

Garth also points out that Sam can be very insecure, which is something I don’t think gets discussed so often but we’re sort of on the subject of Sam today:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/149090730408/mittensmorgul-k-vichan>

I think it’s maybe in Sam’s case less that he has specific insecurities like Dean does, from the germphobia to the repressed sexuality stuff, but that Sam has insecurity at all and that becomes the main issue just as a Thing by itself, since he pushes it all down and lets it bubble out only when he can’t hold it in anymore (Sam is that friend who gets way too real at a party when he’s drunk, on the more distant subject from the last few weeks of AU Sams :P) and the insecurity gets applied to whatever’s going on at the time in the same way anxiety just exacerbates stuff and makes it harder to cope with – 8x23 is still relevant and this whole season is basically an aftermath of a couple of episodes at the end of season 8 as it all ramped up so quickly into the angel fall and so on, and basically we were left after that with Sam’s outburst about trust hanging between him and Dean. Of course now they’re arguing because Dean betrayed SAM’s trust so it moves away from Sam’s issues…

Anyway Garth is blurting something that makes both Sam and Dean uncomfortable and I think specifically because it’s stuff said in the other’s presence: Dean wants to be strong and stoic and NOT be the “wuv hugs” bear in front of Sam (I think this is another one where at the end of the episode Dean lets Garth hug him AFTER Sam has left the room? I may be remembering that wrong) because it’s the whole Performing Dean thing not to reveal the squishy core of his being (aka another little moment that makes ‘you love chick flicks’ a victory for everyone :P). Sam keeps an iron façade up to keep up appearances that he’s coping (I mean… season 7…) so it being made clear he has any insecurity at all sort of I think for him feels like destabilising his position, in their argument, of having moral high ground from being the one wronged. If it becomes emotional he’s probably worried he’d crack in some way, especially when he’s so recently blurted how much he needs Dean’s approval that he’d want to do something like the Trials to prove he can handle himself. He’s taking a serious stand for himself, and his autonomy, so being reminded of his insecurity is probably not such a great thing.

(And last episode when Cas asked Sam about it, he went right back to 8x23 to get to the source of the argument – and Sam’s response was to voice stuff that sort of regressed him right back to that “So?” as he says he wishes he’d just finished the Trials, and that of course was all fuelled by his insecurities then too)

* * *

> GARTH  
> And tell you what? That I messed up? No, I-I knew the deal. There’s no cure, so I accepted my fate. Ate my favorite dish of egg fu Yung, watched the world’s greatest movie, “Rocky III”“ and then… was ready to eat a bullet, when Bess here found me.

Like with 10x04, the “no cure” for lycanthropy thing comes into play as a parallel to the Mark, because of course all the MotW immediately after main arc episodes to do with the Mark and Dean’s state of being are werewolf episodes. It’s a very unsubtle parallel :P (which amuses me all the more that 8x03>8x04 was a thing because as I freaked out about at the time in 8x03, it’s pretty much a template for Dean’s entire season 9 descent hidden under his season 8 Purgatory issues – blame Robbie for this pattern and move on)

To 9x06, actually. This is the scenario of cold open guy there, who I said would be important in the future as a Dean parallel :P He was killed after being denied a choice to live so I was saying however else it looks, in the immediate vicinity it was about Sam and/or Cas. But here Garth is talked back from the brink by someone who truly understands, and they fall in love. As exhausted as I am by it, the Colette parallel is hard at work here – what’s changed in just 5-6 episodes from Cold Open Guy to Garth? Cain had a love interest – one who could offer acceptance, understanding and especially the temperance to manage the bloodlust from the curse. Which is exactly what Garth is immediately shown with, almost like repeating the experiment to prove the first result wasn’t a fluke. He has no brother character and it’s a bit late to cram one in but Abel played basically no part in the previous episode while Colette, as a new character whose dynamic with Cain and the wider plot parallels, was clearly super important to soak up the screen time introducing and discussing her. Now Bess does the same for Garth, pointedly:

> BESS  
> At least he’s not eating human hearts. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a bitten to control his instincts, like Garth does? How well he’s doing?

This is another of those things where Robbie plants stuff which can stretch incredibly far into the future because the lore changes in Bitten (oop! Another title drop! :P) allow sympathetic werewolves who aren’t oblivious to their transformation as well as hierarchy and different sorts of werewolf to allow moral complexity and the struggle against the monster within etc as more than just a metaphor in the way it was used in Heart – as I said in the Bitten rewatch (which, understandably, like, 3 people looked at) with the way the werewolf lore was originally used, there was basically no way to use it except for off-screen werewolves mentioned as often as rougarous, another one shot symbolic monster that has a really awkward re-use for an episode, or to just re-tell Heart in various ways… So werewolves get a revamp for Carver era so they can get written again, with a much more broadly applicable range of metaphors

* * *

> WOMAN  
> You must be Dean. I’m Joy, Garth’s mother-in-law. Uh, stepmother-in-law, which I always thought sounded so silly.

Literally knew she was evil from the first time I watched this because of how she felt the need to clarify that anyway, immediately, before anyone got any wrong ideas about her being related to Bess by blood. And of course, the coding of evil step mothers which really needs to stop being a thing in this day and age, and Garth has already said “big bad wolf” this episode – this seems to go all the way back to the fairytale episode in season 3, starting with Garth as our sleeping beauty.

Of course the “step” side are the more monstrous side of the family, ruining the pacifist ideal of Bess’s original family unit. Just last episode we had Dean confronted with the knowledge John hooked up with Tara, and that throws back to the long-forgotten Adam and the struggle Dean had accepting that John had ever had/wanted a family outside of the nuclear family unit he once had, and the love for Mary that could never be overthrown because it formed the basis of his whole revenge arc. On the side of the fathers in all this it’s healthy and normal to move on but the mothers and any children of their own are the rivals and interlopers to the children from the original family – Dean’s issues with John’s lack of monogamy to his long-dead wife, or Bess being threatened and nearly killed by the monster her father married and unknowingly invited into their house.

And Abaddon represents another invading evil female presence this season, getting in between Cain and Colette, and (one-sidedly) Josie and Henry. She possesses practically a Mother – Maiden – Crone set of characters – Colette, even though she didn’t have children, was stabbed very suggestively in the general womb area and was a wife; Josie, as regular old Josie, we see dressed as a nun, intent on joining another order which while it obviously didn’t forbid marriage especially as a woman in those times, she probably would have had to stay childless to have any career advancement on the same curve as the men (I talked in 8x22 about how Josie was interacting with the other MoL along these lines – I guess 9x17 has more of that although I can’t remember details), and she was pining for Henry with no hope of actually marrying him; and then Abaddon’s possessing the Mother Superior when they first meet her in the flashbacks.

Considering this arc ends with Abaddon’s underwhelming death (you can tell they knew it wasn’t narratively satisfying by how much time they spent on special effects and glowing and screaming) and Josie’s body being brutalised, I’m pretty sure I stand by the thing I said last episode about how this probably shouldn’t have been left to Buckleming to resolve, and I have no idea of the intent of writers who try or are feminist like Glass and Robbie respectively who handled the bulk of this vs the overall picture because it just ends up being a handful of old tropes which you can only pick at the edges of to find anything really valuable (I’m always a little bewildered by Glass, but I always award him marks for trying, because he definitely seems like he wants to do things right, e.g. Krissy, but attitude aside, there’s always uncritically examined tropes in his episodes that make me squint at them funny. Like this. :P)

* * *

Anyway considering the step-mom is another blonde, and wearing white with flowers, and there’s a faint superficial similarity in the farmhouse, including more flowers, I guess she’s like a dark Mary parallel, especially leaning on the door like that while sizing Dean up suspiciously she has shades of Mary in 2x20 answering the door to Dean. Very very faint shades but probably enough to unsettle Dean. :P

* * *

> DEAN [not shaking his hand]  
> Reverend Jim. Yeah, I got it. 
> 
> GARTH [chuckling uncomfortably]  
> Oh. Uh, my bad. Dean’s got this crazy fear of germs.

Garth knows Dean so well – and this seems to be a random excuse but we KNOW Dean’s prissy about germs – Dean’s probably more wigged out that Garth will say anything about him that he never knew he hadn’t been keeping well as a secret. His life flashing before his eyes and all he hears is his own grumpy voice snarking,  _no the one in Miami, the one in Miami, the one in Miami…_

* * *

> GARTH [eating]  
> Mm. Dean loves pie.

_I’m leaving_.

* * *

He’s being flanked by the two cousins on Joyce’s side, aka the burly werewolf dudes who are in the cult. There aren’t a great many ways to shake up the table they have and have Garth next to his wife and the father and step-mom at either end of the table, but there’s something very aggressive about it, again putting Dean on edge about it (and his instincts are right that at least SOME of it is bad) and stopping it from being  _just_  a family affair, as random cousins don’t sell the family closeness. No offence to families who do have cousins in their inner circle but I’m assuming most people don’t have them as hired thugs >.>

* * *

> BESS  
> Many of our kind see themselves as indestructible. This is a constant reminder of how precious our lives truly are. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, but it’s silver. I mean, doesn’t it burn? 
> 
> GARTH  
> Yeah, it does a bit, but that’s kind of the point. It reminds us of our fragility.

I feel like I read some really good meta about this once… Which I don’t have on my blog, okay past!me you really suck because I know you once read every season 9 meta under the sun so this rewatch is a nightmare :P I can’t even remember what exactly it was comparing it to, but the werewolves are using it as a Memento Mori, and specifically a reminder of hunters and that they will be killed if they draw attention to themselves by killing people – it’s almost like a sobriety thing for their vow to keep away from human hearts? It says a lot about the relationship between hunters and monsters, which also explains more more about why Garth never got back in contact etc aside from his initial explanation, and makes Dean all the more an imposter at the table, not just because he doesn’t trust them, but because he’s their enemy too and their reminder is literally about people like him. The hunters who are killers who don’t have any time to get to know werewolves and hear their side of the story. (E.g. the whole conflict in 2x03, Bloodlust, with Gordon and Lenore’s vampires, which was set in the house re-used as Cain’s. Of course, very similar farmhouse this episode too, just a bit cleaner and brighter)

Anyway Dean doesn’t know it yet but he’s also currently actually indestructible, and the Mark may burn a bit but it’s just reminding him of the hold it has on him… and wants him to kill instead of this reminder that for the good werewolves is a reminder of pacifism, at least to everything but farm animals :P

* * *

> REVEREND JIM  
> My daughter, Bess, was born a lycanthrope. It was one of the proudest days of my life. Which soon turned tragic… When a hunter killed my wife. Believe me when I tell you, I wanted to make someone pay. Then I looked at Bess, and I realized the road to revenge is a dark and lonely one, which you never get off. And that hole in the pit of your stomach, you never fill it – ever.
> 
> DEAN  
> Hey, no, I get it.

Random advice about revenge from someone he doesn’t even trust though will ultimately be proved to be one of the good and therefore trustworthy characters… Shame Dean’s on a revenge arc right now… This sort of advice is trotted out all the time – even if our main characters always find themselves on revenge arcs anyway. The one against Abaddon is one of the flimsiest – I think they barely even mention she killed Henry last season, and Dean is pretty much going after her just to have a target for his rage and these feelings, while there at least seemed to be solid motivation in all the other revenge arcs, this one is especially made to feel hollow and pointless, so Dean doesn’t even kill Abaddon as the end of the season thing where it might be satisfying, but just as part of his descent journey, and not even the final step.

* * *

> REVEREND JIM  
> So I chose to look forward, not backwards. And the minute I did that, the powers that be brought this beautiful, compassionate, amazing woman into my life.

Again, rejecting the revenge arc or the urge for violence and equating it to a love interest, but this time cause and effect is backwards to the Colette thing and it turns out Joy is evil and bringing more violence into his life

* * *

You know at this point there’s literally no case though – I can’t even remember how they begin to find their way onto the actual job because the evil cult is not exactly doing anything to raise suspicions and even the fight at the end is mostly cleaning up family drama from Joy’s POV. Not like the cult was actively sacrificing people or whatever – they were supposedly all abiding by the same rules while they waited for Ragnarok?

We’re halfway through the episode and Sam, still in his suit, is talking to the cop who eventually sets them up and tries to kill him, and I think that’s pretty much just to stop him nosing around asking questions…

Hm. :P

* * *

Oh hey here’s Dean peers into a fridge full of gross organs pt.2 – he really spends a lot of time doing this this year. :P Twice in two episodes now, I think. In 9x05 because the monster is hoarding animal parts for evil reasons that are turning him into a monster, but in this episode and the next, the monsters are storing organs/fat with their humane solutions to needing to eat people. Now Dean IS the monster, or on his way there, seeing them from a sympathetic or at least morally grey light.

* * *

> GARTH  
> Look, amigo… I know this is all looks nuts, but I found it. Love and a family? Who cares where that comes from?
> 
> DEAN  
> I do.

Oh Dean >.> I think this is a line that’s sort of subverted by the end of the episode, and Carver era does as a whole drastically open up the qualifications for family, if it’s only just over a season now until Crowley gets the “what is family” talk from Dean. This IS one of the lines which obviously when applied to Dean you can make a queer reading from, especially the whole found family aspect and Garth talking about finding love in unexpected places. And we’re in the part of season 9 where Dean and Cas loving each other unconditionally is about one of the only stable things left to Dean – up until the end of 9x22 we basically see everything including most of his humanity stripped away before the big twist that it has officially all gone, but he doesn’t lose that. Possibly because having to push Cas away at the start of the season feeds a bounce back in his attitude… Anyway Garth managing to get Dean to agree to this sentiment by the end and briefly be the huggy Dean instead of the miserable teddy bear Dean is a good step and it’s tied up into this discussion about the family you love and pick for yourself…

(And I know I said Bess’s first appearance in beige didn’t mean anything but you might have guessed I was lying :P As a Cas/Colette mirror she’s doing a fair amount of work tying all these threads together)

* * *

Anyway Sam and Dean meet up and actually sit on the front of the Impala together to discuss the next step of the case so maybe it’s just habit but the fact we catch them at it shows things aren’t utterly broken between them (they’re back to both wearing regular clothes as well and not being mismatched in who’s got a suit and who’s not). I know Garth episodes are pretty much all (aside from the alcohol ghost one) when Sam and Dean are in the middle of a fight, and he does tend to mediate and put them on the path to being friends again, but in this case 3rd time’s not the charm and the end of the episode is a disaster for them, and they continue being fallen out way longer than this – I’m pretty sure Captives ends with one or the other storming off after Kevin tells them to chill and I’m never sure exactly what number that episode is but I think they mostly start working together again by not talking about the argument really after 9x13. I mean, to refer back to 9x22 again, that ends the personal arc stuff between Sam and Dean with “this is a dictatorship” so…… Season 9 is probably their worst overall season :P I don’t think they’re genuinely alright in a non-catastrophic way between like the end of season 8 and maybe the end of 10x03, despite some bits in the first half of the season where Sam THINKS they’re okay.

… Do they even fall out in season 10? I think Sam would be scared to >.> I can’t remember. We’re reaching the part of the show I remember least well despite having been in fandom for it all :P

* * *

Anyway Dean is allowed for once in their lives to react to an escalating danger situation by just happily killing the werewolf threatening them with a single move and a well-placed knife thrown in his heart, because this is Mark!Dean and he’s nothing if not good at killing things. I think this is the first thing we see him kill after getting the Mark as well.

> DEAN  
> Who cares? We got all the answers we need. 
> 
> SAM  
> I don’t know, Dean. I think we need more. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, what? Sheriff Andy Taylor here wasn’t good enough for you? 
> 
> SAM  
> Enough to kill Garth? Come on, man. Let’s do this right.

Sam may be used to Dean tending towards the black and white view on monsters but I think this catches him out even when he’s used to Dean in a bad mood (2x03 again, though obviously many later examples) just because this is Dean turning on a friend now he’s a monster. I don’t even know if Dean’s mentally boxed Garth off from the rest or not, although he did argue with him in the previous sequence that he was at least aware Garth might be argued around to see it from his perspective, he also blames him for abandoning them etc so it’s hard to know if this version of Dean would lash out at Garth in retribution. Maybe not literally a week into having the Mark, but since it gets SO bad it makes you wonder what would have happened if Dean was pushed >.>

* * *

Aaah Dean and dark empty churches and red exit signs behind his head >.>

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, this, uh…Ragnarok, end-of-days crap – star of the story is a wolf named Fenris, who kills the God Odin before the world ends.

Too late there, Lucifer already did that for you :P I suppose they aren’t to know.

I also have a vague feeling like the gods don’t REALLY die unless they have no belief, just that avatar or version of them. It’s one of the ways I sleep at night about this show killing major deities which still have worshippers out there >.>

* * *

I feel like I should have been counting how many times Sam gets knocked out in Carver era.

* * *

> JOY   
> Last winter, my little brother, Charlie, was killed by a hunter. My husband counseled patience, restraint. Just as when he took over our beloved church, he preached a new direction – lycanthropes and man would co-exist. Peace was more important than dominance

And here’s the fact the werewolves see hunters as the enemies in case the fact they were writing “ragnarok” on those bullets which were significant of the fear of the threat hunters pose to them was too subtle to show where their fear came from or why Joy might have a problem with Garth being in the family :P

* * *

> JOY  
> Which is why I am so pleased it will be his claws that start Ragnarok, not mine. You and your brother coming here was a blessing from Fenris above. The two of you cornered Garth here, and then when Bess came running in to see what the fuss was about… [Gasps] You killed her.

Helloooo Metatron mirror :P she’s setting up a story to manipulate events to her liking, specifically when it comes to manipulating her husband, like in 9x18 with Metatron trying to stir Cas to action, she’s going to influence him to fight.

* * *

Dean gets all the kills, and really slick ones as well. He only gets into a tussle with one who literally got the drop on him by leaping on him from above. Again, easy kills are way less boring than they look by showing this new Dean and his uncanny skill.

> JOY  
> Wearing Russ’ coat to hide your scent – smart.
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, I’m full of surprises.

I love the smart!Dean moments, but I love more than anything Dean acknowledging them. Because he is a VERY clever hunter and sometimes he won’t even own to that. He’s probably riding one hell of an adrenaline high from feeding the Mark for the first time, so it’s a good confidence boost I guess? :P

* * *

Ah yeah Sam walks off and leaves Dean to say his goodbyes to Garth after a really quick hug and a nod.

* * *

Dean reassuring Garth that he’s not responsible for Kevin because Dean was the one that got him killed isn’t… exactly… a victory.

He doesn’t sound exactly sold on his turn around from the earlier conversation in the first sentence but as he keeps talking and gets to “weird and wacky” he starts to sound like he’s getting into his stride >.>

> DEAN  
> Well, hey, you said it – you know, who cares where happiness comes from? Look, we’re all a little weird, we’re all a little wacky – some more than others – but…if it works, it works. 

I also think Dean isn’t totally lost yet JUST because he has the Mark, so once he manages to dial it back a bit and let himself access his squishy core he gets probably privately kind of soppy about Garth having a nice home life. Garth at the start of the episode describing that all hunters know the drill for being bitten, which is suicide, and he’s got a happy home life and a wife instead… I think it was Dean (or Bobby who basically functions as a What Dean Thinks when he voices stuff like this >.>) who said something about how no hunters get out and stay out with a genuine happy ending. Obviously this subverts the total “living a normal human life” thing which has been under the microscope this season, or, since Metatron said “find a wife” to Cas even, and especially 9x06’s themes… Garth has found a subversion on the bland normality of a regular human life, that works for a hunter’s retirement in an unexpected way, and so he tries to argue he should come back and hunt with Dean, and Dean’s like hold up there you’re HAPPY

(Hey, Jesse and Cesar managed a hunter retirement with no weird twists on it :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Besides, somebody’s got to live to tell this damn story someday, and who better than you?

Storytelling theeeme. Garth may be a good candidate, but the WORST one is currently in control of the story :P This comment is totally mis-placed in time because they’re currently in the middle of a season about this Bad storyteller running off with the narrative but almost more than a retirement that makes sense, being able to tell their own stories is an endgame requirement for a happy ending on the show – this is essentially what Chuck bequeathed on Dean in their final conversation in season 11, in the more positive spin on that comment that basically lumbers him with official responsibility for the entire planet (no I’m not done scowling at Dabb about that and we’re more than halfway through hiatus now :P)

* * *

Anyway Dean initiates the hug, which is the sign this was Actual Character Development and not just him saying shit, although the lasting effects of positive character development in season 9 for Dean are either non-existent or the Destiel stuff between 9x18>9x22, take your pick. :P

* * *

(sheesh do he and Cas really not interact again between 9x10 and 9x18? NO WONDER THEY WERE SO GROSS ON THE PHONE)

* * *

Anyway Dean tries his new attitude on Sam, because Garth is magic, but… not that magic. Sam barely interacted with him and ducked out of a heartfelt goodbye. It’s Dean who comes after Sam to stop him leaving.

* * *

He tries hard but mostly to get Sam back to working with him, and so his language is carefully edited:

> DEAN  
> Uh, listen, that night that, uh… You know, we went our – our separate ways – 
> 
> SAM  
> You mean the night you split? 
> 
> DEAN [pauses, nods]  
> Fair enough.

But he also can’t just say sorry (he’s still happier Sam is alive than remorseful for what he had to do to get there) and he abruptly changes direction when he’s getting too real, even in an attempt to be genuinely open and honest about stuff:

> DEAN  
> Hell, maybe I still don’t. But, uh… I know I took a piece of you in the process, and for that…   
> Somebody changed the playbook, man, you know? It’s like what – what – what’s right is wrong and what’s wrong is more wrong, and… I just know that when… When we rode together…

He aaaalmost admits properly to doing something terrible to Sam and then backs out and changes tone of voice to complain about the rest, clearly backing off from admitting the problem (word choice on “problem” specifically because of Sam saying “that’s not the problem” when Dean walked off in 9x10)

“what’s right is wrong” probably is referring to saving Sam though – it’s been his guiding principle all this time, and now he does it and is met with condemnation and feeling terrible for what he did, and it only causes trouble. Which I think is a more abstract way at getting to the semi-apology, but not in a way I think anyone, especially Sam, can read really easily.

Anyway Sam’s lured in by the nostalgia and the “split the crappiness” thing which works great when random monsters and the end times are the problem, but not when the strife both between them AND in the main plot drama is literally all caused by their relationship being so terrible or being intricately linked to it, e.g. hunting Gadreel is immediately super personal and full of personal trauma.

* * *

> SAM  
> But something’s broken here, Dean. 
> 
> DEAN  
> I’m not saying that it’s not. 

I’ve seen some good analysis of this (mostly well after the fact of season 9 where this wasn’t mired in the factions between brothers riled up by an argument) especially on how they know enough to articulate this, but their way of addressing it or even understanding what’s actually broken is completely messed up and beyond their comprehension ESPECIALLY when it comes to the other. Sam’s hurt is more understandable in this case, that he would have serious issues trusting Dean and allowing him into the trusted “family” spot, so his much-questioned-by-fandom rejection does make a fair amount of sense if Sam’s approaching it as the same way as “family don’t end in blood, but it doesn’t begin there either” – if a blood relative hurts you, especially in the way Dean did where it was completely wrapped up in his role as the big brother trying to protect Sam at any cost, then denying him the power to do that again makes sense:

> DEAN  
> Okay, look. Whatever happened… We are family, okay? 
> 
> SAM  
> You say that like it’s some sort of cure-all, like it can change the fact that everything that has ever gone wrong between us has been because we’re family.

But he’s already admitted he wants to work with Dean and sees the good sides of their relationship too, with the split the crappiness thing, and so obviously it’s not a sustainable response to this argument, even if putting a serious wall up helps Sam in the short term, really if he wants to work with Dean anyway they really need to accept each other as family and work through their issues properly and address the root causes?

Also, by then rejecting Dean as a brother and selling it as terms to work together, it probably is a step too far for a reasonable discussion as well just because that would obviously hurt Dean SO much and hurt him to the core of everything that is on Dean’s side of this co-dependency mess that led to Sam getting hurt in the first place… I mean even as a Dean!girl I don’t really want to defend Dean’s side of things here as much as just understand them especially when it comes to sympathy (I mean… I never lost sympathy… because I’m a sucker for Dean… But knowing how might help :P) and I know I’m walking a dangerous line of the reaction to Dean sympathetic fans talking about Sam, but this DOES hurt Dean in the middle of all this and it’s a fairly calculated response and NEITHER of them are discussing this well and both hurt each other. I think for Sam this is a serious control thing where he needs to say stuff like this to assert a safe place for him to work with Dean, and Dean getting this rejection is part of his ironic punishment of saving Sam but losing him in the process etc etc, but… yeah. :P It’s a mess.

* * *

*lets the episode run out into credits* No more talk about it. >.> I have another round of this argument to poke at from afar with a pointy stick NEXT episode.

But Donna… eeeeeee


	13. 9x13

or: new friend! new friend!! new frieeend!!!!

[Originally posted by supernaturaldaily](https://tmblr.co/ZciCEs1wYKcCJ)

I seem to remember she’s in like 10 minutes of it but I don’t care :P

* * *

The recap is only the highlights of the last conversation from 9x12. At least it’s brief? :P In a way that says a lot that the fight is moving on from all the root causes from the start of season 9, and turning into a Round 2: angry because we’re angry sort of fight.

* * *

> THIN MAN  
> Like hell you did, Jabba! I saw you slip a hot dog in your pocket!
> 
> LARGE MAN  
> Well, I hate to break it to you, pal, but that’s no hot dog.
> 
> CROWD  
> Ohh!

I’m weirdly fond of Snymelo on a good day tbh. :P Within a minute we have them making dick jokes about hot dogs so where suggestive stuff swings our way it’s easy not to doubt intent…

* * *

Of course sometimes a hot dog is just a hot dog, since he pulls it out his pocket back in the car.

His t-shirt says, because his jacket cuts it off, “the hot dogger” instead of “the hot doggery” which is tbh no less suggestive and I was about to make it my next point to laugh at that all by itself

* * *

He peers out of his window into the car mirror and sees the Beer of Death logo 

subtle

(Oh it’s Phil directing. Hi Phil! He kinda took a holiday in season 8 & 9 and only directed 2 and 1 episodes respectively… I’m glad he got some me time but I’m also glad he came back and directed 3 apiece in the next 2 seasons :P considering he did this and then would have written 10x08 before he directed anything for season 10, Donna seems to be pretty much to blame for his renewed enthusiasm, so thanks, babe :P)

* * *

The guy’s bumper sticker “BACON makes everything BETTER” makes me suspicious because Phil had his part in Aaron back in 8x13 :P I think Phil was the first director I ever heard anyone talk about thanks to 8x13 stuff and that commentary for the scene. Which means I trust Phil implicitly. Maybe blindly, but eh. Mentioning the bacon thing probably isn’t anything significant here really except that it’s another personality flavour thing for this dead guy & probably social commentary on the sort of dudes who buy bacon-flavoured toothpaste, but I’m still laughing about the textpost from 11x21 where the one time Dean seems remotely impressed with God is discovering he likes bacon, and the snarky comment under that is “you wait until you find out he likes dick too” and that is basically the entire bacon thing in a nutshell so yeah I’m laughing.

* * *

2 episodes ago: Cain and his corn. This episode:

Dean and his cornflakes.

This is the first time we see him in a domestic setting after getting the Mark, and he hasn’t slept, HAS drunk a whole bottle of something…

He’s also using the old hacking programs, which in season 7 especially via Frank were used to show Dean’s obsessiveness over Dick (tempered by Charlie helping out and changing the game and Dean attributing his hacking tricks to her and not Frank later, so Dean was considerably less revenge-y by the end of the season). He’s on similar revenge quests this season – especially against Gadreel who I guess he’d be obsessively searching for (still tracking the vessel’s movements?) since Abaddon is harder to pin down.

* * *

This is also the first time we see Sam and Dean in the kitchen interacting across the table with them in their “proper” places for the vague symbolism about the table I’ve been tracking, which tbh more than anything is just “sides” in the argument, but it’s the same damn table whichever side you sit.

I feel like 10x01 and Sam sitting the other side, also eating cornflakes, also obsessively searching on his laptop for the next lead, should be mentioned here, as it’s one of the other key moments that make me side-eye the use of this table (with 10x18 being what eventually got me but these 2 moments when I came back with hindsight told me it had been there all along the strongest and then of course there’s lots of other little moments where it’s used veeery specifically for this flavour of bro drama or codependency stuff – don’t worry, if you subscribe to this rewatch I have an unhealthy interest in this table, you won’t miss anything :P)

* * *

Anyway Sam messes with the coffee machine and I’m still not sure Berens isn’t indirectly responsible for the whole table thing just by forcing bro talks to happen in the kitchen so that Kevin can overhear them so he can be angry at them appropriately for having to sit through all this.

… this season has an incredible amount of “who else is listening” because I’m factoring in Metatron snooping in all the angel stuff, doubled that up when Gadreel was in Sam, and of course 9x13’s bookended by kitchen scenes which is where Kevin is hanging out.

I find this entire season fascinating just for the writing lessons from Metatron and the way that’s a general/broadly applicable theme. The fact Kevin is the POV character in the kitchen scenes is a brilliant way to look at it, especially with the camera hovering around Dean and glued to the table – it seems Dean POV because it’s either him watching Sam or close ups of Dean, but it could also be Kevin’s been hovering by Dean all night licking a finger and poking it in Dean’s ear waiting for him to react and getting nothing so far.

* * *

Instead of eating the healthy cornflakes it turns out Dean has a pile of pizza crusts beside him.

Kevin, of course, notably leaving crusts of his wholesome PB&J that was his last ever meal – and that being part of what tormented Dean about Kevin’s abandoned workstation in 9x10. Now Dean isn’t eating his crusts either but he’s not eating the Humanity and innocence linked food of PB &J sammiches, but eating pizza alone.

(re: the table metaphor – of course 10x18 being what brought it to my attention, that’s the supposedly happy pizza party but of course is an omen of doom. Crusts seem to be linked to death too, or unfinished business (Kevin is now a ghost, and Dean’s overtly on his vengeful ghost-parallled Mark of Cain arc)

And at this point I’ve mixed up at least 3-4 of my favourite metaphors and it’s all this one bloody table

I hate this table

…

Bonus mention for Cas sitting next to Dean’s spot with his TV in 11x18 while Dean too is burying himself in a screen here

… I’d flip this table but I’m fairly sure it’s bolted to the floor so you can’t do that which is why I hate it even more.

* * *

I remember when I started this rewatch I was like, “dang when I hit 9x13 I am going to really have it in for that table” and that was the season 10>11 hiatus. The table thing only got worse over season 11. I am so sorry. Go find a blogger who doesn’t have a vendetta against the Bunker furniture. I’m not sure I even have any other meta points for this episode? :P I re-watch it way more than most season 9 things in this area of the season.

* * *

> SAM  
> So, what? Death by tube steak? 
> 
> DEAN  
> If only. 

Seriously, this is the best thing about Snymelo episodes. :P

The hot dog guy is called Wayne  _McNut_.

“McNut was unmarried and has no children, but is survived by his mother, Susan, and their two cats Ocar and Frank” … I love the random details :P

* * *

> SAM  
> ‘Cause – I don’t know you… This isn’t about what I said the other day, is it?
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, about that we’re not supposed to be brothers? No, don’t flatter yourself. I don’t break that easy.
> 
> SAM  
> Oh, good, 'cause I was just being honest.
> 
> DEAN [sarcastically as he leaves]  
> Oh, yeah. No, I got that loud and clear.

This shows the way the fight has progressed, and the misunderstandings or not that have come from it (which rings true with what I said about the recap). Sam sounds almost cautious and worried to begin with but Dean harps on “not supposed” which twists the language to show how Dean feels like Sam is completely disowning everything about them probably including everything right back in their history even when things were good (“we split the crappiness” Sam said, last episode, not totally doing that) or whatever. In 9x11 I talked a lot about how Dean was being isolated and denying his OWN part of the family, especially when it came to erasing Sam from it with his language choice.

Sam may have been reaching out to try a careful reconciliation which could have lead to them “being brothers again” but Dean’s still too hurt about the phrasing and lashes out, so Sam hardens again and snaps at Dean. The last part of the exchange, I almost feel like Sam’s defending a contrary position which wasn’t even where he really was last episode, but Dean’s put him there so he’ll fight it anyway. Again like I said last episode, this is a large part because they’re so bad at expressing their feelings anyway or to explore the problems between them or their own approaches that they just don’t have the language to address the real problem, and Sam’s attempts miss the mark of what’s truly wrong between them – not that they’re brothers but how that relationship has been twisted – and so he’s cutting too much off.  So him defending himself being honest is I guess digging in that he is defending his analysis of their relationship and now refusing to see that there could be deeper nuance to it etc that would make it more complicated while just straight up denying and disowning the part that’s complicated (everything except for that they work well together apparently – the business without the family part) instead of critically examining it.

(as I said, using 9x18 to define the real themes of the season including everything as a metaphor for literary analysis or something along those lines really helps >.> now we have Sam and Dean as two readers who can’t agree on an interpretation – that being, how they’re supposed to be family and what’s actually wrong between them)

Anyway, this is all missing the actual meat of WHY they’re arguing as I said, and they finally get to it at the end of the episode. For some reason my brain’s casting back to The Mentalists, the season 7 episode where they’d split up after the Amy fight and then bumped into each other again and were forced to work a job (which was more last episode) but the conversation last episode didn’t really get into the hows and whys, so in this case it’s more like they go back to a shell of their old normal, living in the Bunker together (but Dean’s not even sleeping) forcing themselves to work together, and the conversation at the end of THIS episode is where they get into the hows and whys. In season 7 Dean managed to admit some of stuff that had been bothering him and why he was so messed up (aka, Cas trauma made me do it) and Sam is understanding and they resume working together… The argument worked similarly that Dean betrayed Sam’s trust and the ball was in Sam’s court to accept Dean’s apology. But this time they fuck it up completely… I guess I should wait to the end of the episode. :P

Here they’re rather more mired in this non-argument argument which doesn’t even touch on the actual issues and trauma underneath, and it shows how they’re too dug in on their own sides (which for both of them have been justified and explained in the text by now leaving the viewer to pick who they’re rooting for if they want to go that route) and not ready to confront their problems – so showing how  the argument at the end fails before it even begins.

* * *

Anyway Sam also mistakenly thinks Dean’s weird hours etc are because he’s upset from the fight, and he may be a bit but not, like… to the point of completely not sleeping. Sam misses the first tell-tale sign of the Mark of Cain affecting Dean because he’s distracted by the fight.

* * *

Omg

Look at these lines under the red exit signs directly connecting them with Sam and Dean both

* * *

Donnaaaa

* * *

She and Dean start bonding immediately by each having a doughnut with about as much care for getting powdered sugar all over their faces and clothes, while Sam misses the cue to even take one, distracted by the case file, and probably wouldn’t have anyway. He doesn’t try to STOP Dean eating a doughnut but immediately sees him with sugar all over his face and gestures to Dean to wipe his mouth. Part of the [Dean vs cake](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/Dean-vs-cake) long long complicated meaning is tying into the way Dean polices his behaviour around Sam, and the way Sam can sometimes unthinkingly enforce that, which of course then you take as a metaphor all the way up to some serious deep character stuff like Dean’s need to always be the strong older brother to Sam, sanitised for Sammy stories, and the like. I don’t think the Carver era food metaphors have seriously kicked off as strong as they end up in season 10 when for lack of anything better to do they circle around and around the theme in the middle of the season, but it’s a nice early example of Sam reacting to Dean indulging in a random sweet thing and sort of policing the way he eats it, even though Donna’s standing right there with huge trails of powdered sugar down her tie, and Dean’s not being at all inappropriate for the exact social situation they’re in (e.g. the surface layer on a lot of these incidents is Sam trying to maintain a somewhat passable appearance as FBI agents who wouldn’t behave like this. Dean is a social chameleon and relies on his charisma etc so much, it’s second nature to fit into various scenes, so seeing Donna eating a messy doughnut immediately signals to Dean it’s fine even before she offers him the box… Again, Sam missed the OBVIOUS cue entirely…)

This is a very long paragraph that probably only makes sense if you’ve been following the tangents of the Dean vs cake discussion on my blog and others’ since mid season 10 >.>

* * *

Blah blah, onto the dubiously racist discussion about “gypsies” – kind of think it’s meant to make you dislike Slim Jim, but on the other hand… Kinda iffy treatment all round.

Well, his wife is one of the most sympathetic characters in this episode (the women actually get treated relatively well this time – Donna is cool, the Pishtaco lady survives and isn’t even hurt, even if her life is wrecked, she’s exonerated from being a monster or doing anything wrong by the end even if they suspect her for a while, and then this:

> SLIM JIM  
> But don’t call her that. She says it’s reductive. 

Even if he rubbishes her statement, he at least calls her “Romanichal” as a way of introduction rather than “gypsy” and repeats what she feels about the term so at least gives her something of a voice in it and gets the point in there that you shouldn’t use that term… then he devolves into crappy ally status afterwards anyway, romanticising the word… We are kinda meant to root for her leaving him and running off with Wayne even if they cheated to win, just because Slim Jim is a dick :P

Lots of husbands are dicks this episode >.>

But on the other hand there is the long camera shot of Sam looking at her “big fat gypsy wedding”esque photo and I can’t help feeling she’s still sort of an object of mockery by the camera at this point just because of the title drop of that show followed by the picture >.>

Eurgh.

* * *

It’s cute how the Putsi Bag webpage runs out of space so they just put in generic lore from the show about hexbags, I assume from their own style guide because it includes the detail that they’re always supposed to burn blue when they’re burned. Heh.

* * *

This whole conversation with Mala is meta’d to death, but yet another instance of Dean getting distractedly carried away with “a little extra cushion for the…” and then Sam glaring him into shutting up – this time just because TMI, Dean.

This is one of those episodes where this happens constantly :P There’s also the bit with Sam and Dean fighting over who stays to talk to the cute trainer, and Sam judges Dean for lying about his age (also meta’d to death, may as well mention here just to affirm I know it exists. :P)

* * *

Also the princess Jasmine thing – like I said, lots of dickish husbands and Dean’s sympathetic then, but there’s also good romantic relationships in this episode, with her and Wayne, which Dean gets all soppy over, and then the Pishtaco and her husband, who have a great relationship.

This season is even more extreme than season 8 with romantic stuff tbh just because the starting stretch of episodes covered so much, and now we have all these episodes, which feature married couples (Cain & Colette, Garth & Bess, now all these characters)… *scrolls ahead in the transcript to find out their names* okay, yeah this episode is a bit thin (lol) so I’m just getting right to the point while we’re here :P Maritza and Larry are one of the good couples, but one of the only ones with a brother – Alonso is used as a Dean parallel kinda because of being a monster who can’t control his nature, but when it comes to the dynamic between the family, he’s the sibling who doesn’t get what he wants and ruins things for the married couple, even killing the innocent human husband of his sibling. Obviously that didn’t happen so extreme, but the Sam-Gadreel forcing Cas out in 9x03 because of insecurity thing obviously doesn’t work out super great for Cas, and since Road Trip Dean & Cas have been really good with each other, so they are the happy marriage again. I don’t know if the parallel has much of a place up this end of the season except for maybe reminding us how it all went wrong (and another subconscious source of stress in the argument especially as Dean seemed jealous of Sam n Cas hanging out last episode when Sam mentioned it), but Sam has nothing like it so the sibling dynamic + love interest has to swing around to Dean being the one who has the love interest.

With the bad marriage and cheating, there’s also a good Drowley love triangle thing – Mala was planning to elope with Wayne, and Dean ends this season eloping with Crowley. Obviously Cas isn’t a dick like Slim Jim, but it sort of works as more of a mirror for Sam and Dean, with the co-dependency making it a bad relationship, just like Maritza and Alonso have a terrible, controlling relationship (she cuts off his food so he starts killing) that flares up violently and gets innocents caught in the crossfire. So there’s a ton of angles to come at these relationships, and platonic and romantic mirrors working at cross purposes to each other at times. E.g. in the “Dean is Alonso” parallel, Sam and Cas are Maritza and Larry.

(meanwhile Donna over there is in a self-esteem spiral, eating doughnuts but booked to visit a weight loss spa – all the way off in 11x07 she’s doing crossfit and dieting and actually doing work to lose weight, but here we see her caught kind of in a really bad way where she’s upset and not handling it perfectly as she’s relying on the spa to do the work for her, while not even cutting down on doughnuts even though she feels bad enough to pay for the expensive spa treatment in the first place. It’s not  _terrible_ but she’s not happy and she’s relying on stuff outside of herself to make herself feel better, whether it’s the food or the promise of the spa… Even by 10x08 she’s definitely much more resilient even if she has a bad moment with Doug, she’s at least more self reliant?

Anyway as a parallel to Dean, they’re both eating the powdered doughnuts, dealing with a break up of one sort or another (Sam and Doug) and coping unhealthily – obviously telegraphed by the state we found Dean in at the start of the episode, Donna and all her unhappiness reflects on Dean, which I think is another reason he sympathises so much with her from the start. Also being able to tell Donna she deserves better is him addressing himself, without taking the advice to heart – she deserves better than Doug, but Dean’s helpless not to fall for his “dick” this season even though he could benefit from the advice that he could do better than Crowley :P)

* * *

Okay I think that’s everything for like the next 30 minutes, nice. Now I can just sit back and watch :P

* * *

TBH this episode has a lot of weight loss and marriage-industry critical commentary just for its own sake with the next victim desperately trying to lose weight for her wedding, and clearly representing an unhealthy approach to the need to look thin vs just doing what’s healthy and happy.

The whole fat sucker thing is also a sort of “great idea but only in fantasy worlds can you have a magical way to lose this much weight without effort” thing…

* * *

> DEAN  
> You’re awkward. You know, weird – Sam Weird. Sorry, man. I’m just… being honest.

This one’s been done to death for the relationship aspect of it e.g. Dean being awkward and weird but not with girls, projecting like crazy… But he uses the “just being honest” thing Sam used on him, again betraying quite a lot about himself – how hurt he is about Sam’s comment – when trying to insult Sam. Which really just makes Sam look so done with Dean, all it really accomplishes is reminding him in the middle of the case that they’re still fighting and that Dean isn’t being playful about this, but kind of making winning the argument over who stays and talks to the girl vs who goes to inspect a week old shrivelled dead body more of a power play or whatever, as if scoring points in non-related things will help back up his own side in the argument. (I mean… he is the one who hurt Sam, so for all my sympathy to Dean, he doesn’t have such a good leg to stand on there so he needs some small victories :P)

* * *

Windmill spotting! This looks a LOT like the motel from 9x05 but it isn’t, but the same basic thing of red and white buildings and the mountain behind.

* * *

It’s just occurred to me that Martiza and Larry were so chill about hiring Sam as a yoga instructor because they literally don’t care about any other part of their spa giving results, so as long as things LOOK the part (like their video) they seriously aren’t bothered by any of the real benefits of the food and exercise because that’s not what makes people thin there. Aka his sham yoga instructing plays right into their sham entire spa. It’s all surface level stuff, with about as much meaning as the fanservice this episode offers with the costumes :P

Or to go with the theme of the season, it’s the story they spin, Metatron style, and the non-monster staff are unknowingly playing their roles like the angels he’s manipulating.

* * *

I find it is actually offensive how Dean has this maroon shirt ONCE in the entire show in this scene and it’s not his normal one, it’s a proper button up I mean LOOK AT HIM

* * *

Anyway Dean says he and Sam are brothers and Sam has to be all “to clarify, what my brother is trying to say…”

in this scene they’ve forced themselves to be brothers again as a cover, or Dean’s announced it anyway to spite Sam, and Sam’s then having to talk about Dean as his brother, as part of their cover… It’s a mess, guys.

* * *

Dean and Larry seem like the worst people to hang out together. Dean does his “Kickin ass and takin names!!” thing and then Larry does all his random air punching to prove how fit he is. Like, they would be the worst Bros if they hung out. They seem like they’d be the sort of friends who’d be like “I bet I could jump off this thing” “I bet I could jump off this higher thing” together after a few drinks.

* * *

This is such an awkward conversation though.

* * *

Oh well at least we get Dean in a hair net.

* * *

> RANDOM LUNCH PERSON [to DEAN]  
> Hey, you have any oatmeal?
> 
> DEAN [Chuckles]  
> Yeah, I wish. No, but we have, uh, something that’s tofu over there. I – what is that? It’s a pancake. It’s tofu.

God bless the Mockumentary, but it’s ruined this scene :P (And by ruined I mean improved but I’ll never not think of Mockumentary!Jensen protesting too much about the tofu)

* * *

Oh wait I completely forgot to mention the “quit flirting with the trainer” thing. I feel like Alonso has kind of already got the measure of Dean long before Sam came along to say hi, especially if Dean’s this weird and chatty with the oatmeal seeking randos at the spa. He’s probably actually made for customer service with his easy charisma and flirtyness in non-threatening situations like this. I’m remembering the flirty smiles parallel in 8x14 between the male motel manager and the girl at the comic shop. Dean just has a way about him :P I think Alonso has been steaming about Dean flirting and being extra chatty with everyone but can’t really tell him to stop it but he can tell him to knock it off when it’s someone he shouldn’t be talking to.

The pancake line could be totally random but it had to be scripted and cast because that can’t (all) be improvisation (something about the delivery makes me wonder though, if he didn’t at least pad the dialogue) if there’s an extra, with a line, who had to approach at this point. So I think rather than being just a silly moment, it tries to prove what’s making Alonso annoyed about Dean being chatty and give some better understanding to him snapping at Dean. Dean’s weirdly in his element in any cover identity (hi I’ve just rewatched my way through Hollywood Babylon and Folsom Prison Blues with my mum :P) so I wouldn’t put it past him to be like this with anyone at the breakfast bar. He’s a friendly people pleaser when he has no reason not to be, and flirty by nature.

* * *

I wonder who Dean was texting while he was loitering in the kitchen before Alonso set him to work with the pudding. I hope it was Cas.

I’m pretty sure it’s this season which at some point or another implies they’re in regular communication.

* * *

“Hey babe do you ever miss pizza more than you miss some people”

“Dean stop texting me I am in the middle of an angel war”

“This is like season 6 all over again I swear”

“… I’m sorry Dean. Do you want to get pizza later?”

“Can’t, we don’t see each other for another five episodes… aw crap my boss is nagging me to work. Miss you almost as much as pizza x x”

* * *

Dean tastes the forbidden pudding. 

Babe, no. *Cas sends grumpy emoticons*

* * *

I can’t believe Sam nearly killed his yoga group

This is why we do background checks instead of hiring anyone who walks into the office

* * *

Possibly the funniest part about Dean’s whole escapade getting drugged is he doesn’t take off the hairnet for the entire sequence…

* * *

The way Dean says “salty AND sweet” is one of those things you’re contractually obliged to never quite be over.

* * *

The cook thinking Sam is having some sort of fitness rage at him is possibly the funniest part of the episode. Like, you got to wonder why there’s vacancies on the staff anyway :P How often did the chefs get terrorised for using too many calories by giant angry personal trainers?

* * *

> DEAN  
> Yeah, Doug’s a dick. You deserve better.

GET MARRIED

* * *

> SHERIFF DONNA  
> Thanks. But he was right. That was a dark time for me. Whoever said you eat your pain? Not me. I guzzled it.

This line has been endlessly paralleled to Dean’s state of mind this season too – next season it’s actually surprising we DON’T see Dean with one of Donna’s beloved cookie dough milkshakes, since he eats everything else :P

* * *

> LARRY  
> I did a little digging. I found this in their glove compartment. [He pulls out the fake ID box]

I’m so fond of Larry. You deserved better, bro. Especially since they don’t turn out to be evil, the fact he’s snooped on the Winchesters isn’t suspicious so much as it’s him being really protective of his family, even when Alonso is a creep and Larry as the token human only has his floppy hair and his fake kung fu… Like, he just goes and confronts Alonso which is recklessly stupid but Larry has guts :P

* * *

> DEAN  
> The dude from the cafeteria?
> 
> MARITZA  
> He’s my brother.

I do like how on this show that’s all  you need to say for a dramatic cliffhanger scene change because that 3 word sentence is just like “okay we know the deal here then” and explains everything about her protectiveness and loyalty and the mess this situation is etc etc because this show has such a language about siblings and the messed up stuff they do for each other.

* * *

Larry probably shouldn’t have called Alonso a freak, though. Whoops. That word was more often used against Sam, especially with the entire demon blood arc etc. But I suppose season 9 onwards is about swapping Sam and Dean’s roles in some way, especially on main arc stuff like this… idk :P

* * *

> SAM  
> Let me guess. Alonso wasn’t a big fan of portion control, was he? 
> 
> MARITZA  
> […] But he said the more I deprived him, the hungrier he got. [She starts to sob] And now three people are dead. My husband…
> 
> […]
> 
> MARITZA  
> The – the basement? That’s – that’s where he spends most of his time now.

More vaguely ominous lines I’ve seen linked in meta to Dean’s descent arc. The one about hunger in particular goes very well with Dean’s need to kill.

Bonus points for implying he became a basement gremlin after the argument with his sister, since we join Dean lurking in the underground kitchen at the start/end of the episode.

The whole sequence of Sam and Dean going into the basement is all descent-y.

Dean’s the one who wanders off under a lurid red exit sign.

* * *

Sam gets knocked down and nearly killed a few times, Dean wanders in and saves him at the last moment: more Dean monster hunting competency porn :P Since we see so much of Sam getting knocked down in the fight it doesn’t give us much to work on with Dean. It’s all on Sam telling Alonso that his family rejected him:

> SAM  
> I guess after you killed her husband… you were too monstrous, even for her.

Like I was saying there’s a very set language about siblings on this show, so Sam points out this and shows how the thing has been broken – there’s something where even this loyal sibling protecting her brother has a limit. In the end Sam does end up not giving up on Dean (you could argue to more disastrous effect – in the short term in 10x03, good, in 10x23, not so good with the whole Darkness unleashing thing and the worse side of this need to save each other being shown again) but this is riiight at the start of the Mark of Cain arc AND Sam is currently trying to disown Dean for their previous drama, which does make this tenuous as sort of immediate making you worry about this lines, even if it ends up that it doesn’t matter, it raises the question of if this could even happen, which could have been a serious question if you ever thought there was a chance in hell Sam would seriously disown Dean for real when it came down to it by the end of the season >.>

* * *

Dean hangs back to chat with Donna a little while Sam talks to Martiza :’)

Who Dean wants to kill:

> DEAN  
> You said that you wanted to keep things strictly business. Well, last I checked, we were in the business of killing monsters.
> 
> SAM  
> I wanted to keep things strictly business between us. But I still have a heart. What if I had crossed paths with a hunter back when I was possessed by Gadreel? I could’ve ended up dead, too. Would I have deserved that? Would I have deserved to die?

Worst version of Dean is the worst >.> This almost makes it sound like he just panders to saving monsters because Sam would like it, in other cases. Which obviously isn’t true as he’s been moved to make the right choice out of the goodness of his heart many times. Since 2x03 is kinda haunting Dean, starting there :P

But re: no heart… he has been compared to the tin man and I’m fairly sure that line has been included in some of the speculation/application of the metaphor to Dean.

Also he was totally ready to stab Gadreel even before he had the Mark, because he thought he’d lost Sam and killing Gadreel would at least avenge him even if it simultaneously would also be what really killed Sam. >.> Wrong question.

* * *

Possibly guilt about that rather than the puppy dog eyes that sways Dean in the end >.>

* * *

Poor Maritza though… The long last shot of her is heartbreaking. I forgot they tell her to go back to Peru, but at least they don’t kill her >.> Also I guess she has no obligation to do it once they leave – she can just start a new spa under another name, or get a job at one or whatever. Selling Canyon Valley would make her rich, never mind what else they had earned from its popularity >.> She’s a monster with options. Hollywood would treat her a lot better than Minnesota :P

* * *

Oh look we’re back at that table. Dean has retreated back to the kitchen on his own and is drinking by himself when Sam finds him (re: Maritza saying Alonso just hid in the basement after being cut off)…

* * *

Sam starts like this:

> DEAN  
> About what you said the other day. 
> 
> SAM [with an "I knew it” face]  
> I thought it didn’t bother you.

Scoring points in the  _latest_  round of their argument and assuming that this will be about 9x12

But Dean immediately goes all the way back to 8x23, and defends all his actions since on the “Sam is alive” justification, so Sam’s face grows more annoyed and like, he totally wasn’t ready for  _that_ discussion because  _that’s_  what’s really pissing him off about Dean and they probably could have gone a dozen rounds of bickering over who talks to the cute girl at the crime scene or whatever and let it blow over and bury the REAL hurt all down deep where it can stew with everything else they repress, but Dean actually talks about stuff for once, earning this response:

> SAM  
> And that… is the problem. You think you’re my savior, my brother, the hero. You swoop in, and even when you mess up, you think what you’re doing is worth it because you’ve convinced yourself you’re doing more good than bad… But you’re not.

This is like watching a baby bird trying to fly

> I mean, Kevin’s dead, Crowley’s in the wind. We’re no closer to beating this angel thing. Please tell me, what is the upside of me being alive?

*splat out of the nest into the cold hard ground after a few hopeful flaps and a loony toons hovering moment*

Sam NEARLY managed to address the fact Dean NEEDS to save Sam but misses that it’s something broken in Dean in exchange for oversharing some of the stuff he’d previously alluded to towards Cas about his own lack of self worth/wish he’d just died for the sake of doing the trials, aka not being able to see past what’s broken inside of himself to be able to help Dean. He doesn’t say “Hell is still open” but he’s thinking it because we know he has been given a concrete upside to his  _death_  rather than his life, and he told Cas this 2 episodes ago.

So the miscommunication continues over the real issues, because Dean’s not addressing his deep down trauma about saving Sam because he doesn’t want to because hey, it worked, Sam’s alive, and he’s learned nothing about the importance of letting go except for internalising Kevin’s death as self-loathing because, like Sam, he knows something is wrong but he’s absolutely not equipped to understand it, especially when his understanding would violate the core principle of “look out for Sammy” which would mean putting Dean in a place where he could think “maybe Sam should have had a natural death” instead of “I’m poison”…

This is all very painful to be typing when I’m down at the end of season 2 in my other rewatch >.> Maybe it’s a good coping mechanism for people who’d bash their head on the wall normally because of season 9. I’m not unaware at our current pace I may be watching season 3 concurrent to demon!Dean… :P

Dean DID learn to let go in season 5, but a series of co-dependency micro-aggressions where no one got seriously hurt or died in Gamble era (e.g. 6x11), which romanticised it rather more, or at least didn’t sell it as completely toxic bar one piece of dialogue from Lisa in 6x06 (Hey! Same writers! *waves furiously at Gamble era Snymelo*) followed by the season 8 arguments etc has managed to build Dean up to thinking it’s okay, then tested him to another extreme not totally unlike season 2. At least when it comes to the way Dean has to do something so desperate to save Sam. (like, HAS to, no other option)

I don’t know how much Sam ever really processed what Dean did in season 2 – if because of John’s deal the whole ~paying on the favour~ aspect of it made more sense to Sam (e.g. how he reacts in season 3/the season 3>4 gap, trying to save Dean and then trade himself for him when it’s too late) and he was so hung up on the “kill you” part he missed the “save you” that came first… Like, not consciously linking it to Dean’s actions of NOT killing Sam and doing everything in his power to avoid that. It wasn’t that he subverted John’s order to kill Sam, it’s that he fulfilled the other option of saving him, by the end of season 2. Which Cain even mentioned 2 episodes ago, that Dean saved his brother rather than kill him, evoking the season 2 plot up this end of the show. Dean said then that you “never give up on family” while Sam says this (moving to his place on the table opposite Dean):

> SAM  
> I was ready to die. I was ready. I should have died, but you… You didn’t want to be alone, and that’s what all this boils down to. You can’t stand the thought of being alone.

Sam is still attempting to analyse Dean, and there’s a lot about season 1 Dean where he didn’t want to be alone e.g. why he came to get Sam from Stanford in the first place (uh.. fairly sure that’s canon and not a theory? :P My brain is going all blurry on the bro talk stuff but I THINK Dean told him that at some point in season 1 >.>) but anyway not wanting to be alone was sort of a thing for Dean back THEN. And either it was fairly obvious or Dean literally told Sam. But there’s so much trauma piled up on top of that, especially with the season 2 order from John challenging so much about how Dean relates to Sam, and giving him literal life or death responsibility over him, that their relationship has been broken pretty much ever since 2x01, at least in this respect of Dean having any chance at healthy responsibility for Sam’s wellbeing.

(thanks, John.)

* * *

> SAM  
> I’ll give you this much. You are certainly willing to do the sacrificing as long as you’re not the one being hurt.

TBH Sam is probably still hurt from season 2/3 – Dean selling his soul and going to Hell was a catalyst for a LOT of Sam’s own descent stuff, and while he probably doesn’t see a straight line from that to Swan Song, he certainly was hurt when it was the most recent big plot point.

Anyway I guess this line is really referring to how Dean made the choice for Sam aka made the decision to sacrifice but without being the one who was sacrificed… Which I think is a kind of weird comment without looking at it like Sam’s talking about season 2 all through this, because all the stuff that happened to him wasn’t strictly a sacrifice even if he’d voluntarily done it, or, like, Kevin’s death wasn’t a sacrifice (and he’s probably mad they’re taking his name in vain listening to all this :P) – the other thing just being referring to the episode “Sacrifice” where Dean burst in and changed Sam’s mind on the sacrifice there… TBH Sam’s motives on this line are really weird and I can’t tell if it’s a writing thing or if I’m missing something obvious?

It could be about Dean making sacrifices like sending Cas away which hurt others especially materially/physically way more than it hurt him. Idk :P

I’m pretty sure everyone spent the rest of season 9 arguing about this one and never really solved it :P I’ve read a lot of meta and it’s all blurred out in my head because it’s so often been paying the blame game

* * *

Anyway then Sam says his thing about same circumstances, and ugh, Sam. :(  He’s lashing out at Dean again and you at least can’t fault him for being angry and upset. His approach and understanding of the situation might be wrong but whatever I’ve analysed from that point, that’s not saying he’s not right to be upset about being hurt?

Just that this argument might have not been so terrible if they knew how to even start to discuss their trauma properly instead of just using it to hurt each other. >.>

* * *

And I know Dean’s the party in the wrong here, but Sam lashes out with a sort of last straw abandonment issues proclamation after already disowning Dean, now saying he wouldn’t do anything to save him is just giving Dean more ammunition in his own self-loathing which is now fuelling the descent arc…

* * *

… never mind Sam will live to regret these words by the end of the season, recant that message at the last minute, and then fall into his season 10 downward spiral where he feels he HAS to save Dean because of all that he’s said and done that pushed Dean away and it sort of trapping him into a place where he HAS to do the same thing in the similar situation or fall short of Dean’s standards (“you should have looked for me in purgatory”) – he can’t be Maritza disowning Alonso and handing him to hunters, basically. Hence my wincing at him mocking him with that in the fight. “You don’t give up on family, ever” is just as unhealthy a statement though, and I guess Carver era tries to say balance and proper understanding would be the way through all this, but they’re at the extreme ends where they can’t say anything to make themselves understood, and instead say the most extreme statements, burrowing into the emotional familiarity of their parts of the co-dependency, no matter how bad it feels because it’s the only way that seems right to them…

* * *

*episode abruptly ends with Sam walking off and Dean looking miserable*

This season is  _rough_.


	14. 9x14

Or: … has anyone else noticed the fourteenth episode of the season becoming the best thing for miles around in the last 3 years for some unexplained reason?

* * *

You know you’re back in good hands because the recap is being witty - Muriel saying “it’s madness!” straight to Bartholomew saying “it’s Bartholomew”

* * *

The rest of the recap reminds me that this is probably Berens’ greatest Buckleming Fix It of the lot since he’s going to wrap up the crazy angel war stuff especially from 9x03/9x09 and move Cas to where his arc actually is going from 9x18 onwards with no more weird factions, just Cas vs Metatron, AND give Kevin some catharsis, and get to be the writer to bring Linda back from the dead since Buckleming “killed” her off screen…

Plus Dean wears that suit, and there’s Wanek’s directing. Why is this NOT one of the instant classics? :P 

* * *

Thinking of directing you want to lick, the whooole opening trip through the Bunker. Everything’s so isolated and alone. 

The tap dripping in the first shot says as much about the silence of the place, that this is the most interesting thing happening here since Sam and Dean stopped talking.

Then we have our obligatory shot of the table where they fought, the kitchen empty signalling louder the silence that has fallen between them.

Then Crowley’s dungeon, still set up with his absence obvious from picture: he was teased as the monster lurking under the bed in a way until 9x10, when they let him out on a truce and things went all unexpected on his part of the story. But he presented a serious threat or at least the ominous spectre of the skeletons you keep in the closet in a family. Him taunting Kevin was in the recap so if these shots are Kevin POV he’s harping on what Crowley said, and we can see it before we ever know it’s him. 

The generic hallway shot pairs with many instances of the Bunker being invaded by the monster - demon!Dean and Amara do similar. Since there’s nothing else going on here in the darkened bunker, and considering what Kevin died for and how, his haunting of their space makes him a spectre of their argument in a way. Especially as they keep trotting out his death before and after as ammo in the argument.

Then the war room, with its flickering map table, and the prison bar imagery cast cross the entire thing - I think 8x22 used it across half the room? This is a very visually similar shot to the one in 11x21, but taken from above the railings, and using the light effect of the ceiling instead - rather than trapping Dean in a box, it turns the whole Bunker into a prison. The war room in particular is linked to the job and working cases/following main plot leads, and until the kitchen came into its own, had all the arguments over it. (Kevin died in the library because it was a closer association to a home-y feel, e.g. all the settling in shots in season 8 were in the library). A very grim message of them being trapped in their ways/the demands of the job, especially when they’re trying to work together and NOT be family, making the obligation of the job their motivation, not doing it as family or because “we split the crappiness” - I guess this is crappiness running rampant. :P

Then finally the whooshy ghost POV to Dean listening to music with the huge noise-cancelling headphones because he’s shut himself away (Kevin moves through the closed door) and he’s ignoring communication attempts. Finally Kevin gets his attention by disrupting his music into static.

* * *

(I’m reminded of 2x13 here, with Dean on lockdown and listening to music while enjoying the magic fingers - a world of difference emotionally, but the same thing of him being shut away and with nothing to do but listen to music to while the time away)

He’s not sleeping despite the fact the kitchen clock shows 2am, but Sam is in his PJs and probably got woken up for this

* * *

Huh, I’m always thinking about Bunker furniture but I never realised how MUCH of it swivels. ALL the Library chairs that are the regular wooden ones are swivel chairs, just like the stools on the kitchen table.

This moment of Kevin spinning invisibly in one of the library chairs has somehow not translated to every Bunker fic containing plenty of spinny chair moments.

* * *

“So.” “Bunker’s haunted” *TITLE SCREEN*

Is probably one of the better cut to title screens on the show :P

* * *

Sam takes the “side of the table to talk to a character walking into the kitchen when you’re already there” seat, aka he’s in Dean’s spot but Sam and Dean aren’t having an argument about anything co-dependency-y and Dean’s got to interact with the coffee machine.

He’s channelling the demon!Dean vibe early with this floofy hair and black on dark grey clothing.

* * *

Showing an angel mourning at a funeral is a really nice touch to immediately make him more relatable and show there’s some non-crazy, power hungry angels out there. It’s been hard to remember that angels really care for each other, in general, the last few seasons. Now all the louder, power hungry ones bar Metatron are pretty much all gone and  Bartholomew’s minutes are numbered, the gentler angels who are just looking for purpose and who care about each other more than power are allowed to return. (Hannah will be here soooon – 4 episodes away!)

I swear the grave that whooshes by at the front of the shot as the black trenchcoated angel leaves the funeral, says “Ezekial” which is kind of bitterly hilarious :P

Even with the funeral angel getting there first, I guess the reason Cas doesn’t have a black trenchcoat in canon is because black and white are the generic angel colours, and the beige of his coat has always stood out and made him look different as none of the others were even that bold with their colour schemes.

Still, Cas probably does pin him to the tree in such a BAMF rage because he’s jealous he can’t wear black because theeemes stop him.

* * *

Aah! This is the plaid under the collar reveal. Which has been meta’d to death but I suppose to pick specifically on this episode, considering the extensive amounts of meta about the dramatic exit at the end of the episode that Cas does, and how this is another season building up to him picking humanity (and “Humanity” being one plaid wearing Winchester and then Cas’s fuckin’ BED in 10x01 and – I’m getting ahead of myself here) like I was saying this is where his arc kind of picks up and actually starts heading towards where the season ends, so the instant we see Cas, seeing his little peek of plaid on him is already telling us EXACTLY where this is going to go, while he’s menacing this poor angel over his life choices.

* * *

(Can I just say… especially now 99% of everyone who ever wrote the show since Cas has naffed off over the years, of the 3 writers/writing teams left who’ve ever written for this show before, 2 of my fave Cas writers endure? (no, not Buckleming :P) – just… take a moment because this is Berens’ second ever episode, and his first was 9x06 and that was one Cas, a very sad, quiet Cas, and then this is one of Cas’s most BAMF episodes of the lot from beginning to end… I LOVE this episode’s Cas stuff and idk why we don’t talk more about it because even if it’s not Destiel, it makes me so hyped up about Cas just AS Cas being able to do Cas things, and the fact that Berens writes a good BAMF Cas just for Cas’s sake, and Dabb knows how to write his sense of humour… Season 12 hopefully won’t do our smol son too wrong :P)

* * *

Anyway today there’s a post about Cas slamming that kid up against the wall in 10x09 going around and here’s Cas slamming this angel up against a tree, and basically I like the idea that Cas schedules “slamming someone up against a thing” in his diary he does it so often

* * *

> MAN  
> You’re looking in the wrong place. Rebecca and Metatron were friends. That was a long time ago. Had no contact since the fall. Naomi, Metatron, heavenly battles, politics – she gave it up. All of it. Rebecca taught us the angels have lost touch with our true mission. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> What do you mean by “us”? 
> 
> MAN  
> The penitents. Her followers.
> 
>  CASTIEL  
> Another faction. 
> 
> MAN  
> Not like the others. We don’t make war. We live humbly among these humans.

these are the most Cas angels ever – from living humbly among humans, aka a serious endgame goal for Cas to live among HIS humans, angel or not, and calling themselves the “penitents” and wanting to follow the original mission – the only angel who has stuck to it so thoroughly EVER being Cas, of course. Even his actions such as Godstiel are filtered through a warped sense of the mission. Angels like Naomi, Gadreel, kinda Hannah, EVENTUALLY METATRON HIMSELF, find their way back to what the mission really is, or at least have a revelation about what they’ve been doing wrong and understand, finally… And of course Cas is guided by penitence ever since season 7/8 (7 to his family, 8 onwards to Heaven) and his will is torn between helping them and being with his human family… At this point he’s on the path of penitence and trying to fix Heaven and sort this all out and acting by himself to do so, and so discovering a faction like the penitents is a hopeful, positive step, that the angels might be redeemable as a whole.

I guess this is the good side of the restructured Heaven, but obviously there’s plenty of bad sides including the fact this season kills off every single strong personality who might lead them well aside from Cas and Hannah, and once she’s dead, obviously we see by 11x23 Heaven just gives up - ending the personality cults within it leaves it weakened by its power vacuum.

(I seriously don’t want Lucifer to have a redemption arc and end up leading Heaven because wtf sort of message would that be – the show might have him as more of a character than many things do but he’s still done awful stuff up to VERY recently and not in a way even the end of season 11 could just make alright… But unfortunately I can also see using him to seal the power vacuum in some way, especially as the show keeps on developing him so far beyond regular depictions of Lucifer)

* * *

Wow this got off track

* * *

> MAN  
> He killed all the others. And he killed her. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Who did? 
> 
> MAN  
> Who else? The monster. Bartholomew.

This long dramatic pause leaves you to wonder “who else” and who “the monster” is before the angel gets there. At the moment we have no comment on Malachai’s death as far as I recall and Metatron, Gadreel and Bartholomew are all out there, Gadreel with an arc about murdering angels for Metatron we’ve barely even seen the start of. Metatron, the big bad of the angel arc, is actually the least likely to be murdering people with Gadreel at his right hand, but that’s 3 contenders. Again, just a theme of subtext etc and the complexity of storytelling which will be SO important when 9x18 comes – with that episode, I’ve seen it argued that Gadreel could have maybe not killed anyone at all, it was so vague, and though there’s no loud reason to doubt it, the writing and directing of that episode obscures Gadreel’s actions thoroughly so it leaves ROOM to argue the subtext of what happened there, which is probably exactly what Robbie wanted. The entire season is a master class on telling us to look beyond the main text, and a line like “who else” when there’s upwards of 4 characters who could be the one person the angel is referring to.

Even if there’s obvious answers (Bartholomew is named immediately, and it’s still more likely than not Gadreel murdered all those hundreds of angels over the rest of the season) it’s sort of a teaching moment on subtext and subtlety, for the sake of learning to apply it elsewhere.

Season 9 is a masterclass, honestly. It wasn’t even done schooling us after it was over, because there was still stuff to come, ESPECIALLY canon Drowley, or Cain’s return, to show that its subtext wasn’t done making a point. :P This season needs the hindsight of season 10 to even begin to show us the number of ways in which it was not fucking around.

* * *

AND, to return to the coffee machine, that too is making a similar point (I did say last episode I blamed Berens for everything). Kevin was subtextually there in the previous episode, watching the kitchen scenes from the vantage of the coffee machine, and even says he has heard all their arguing. Now Dean and Sam have been clued into the fact he’s here, they see the coffee machine in a totally different way, pay direct attention to it, sit and wait for it to react, and Dean even engages with Kevin by talking into the air at the invisible presence that he had been oblivious to the previous episode. They have been forced to engage with a previously hidden part of the text, which is a metaphor basically for exactly what happened to me in 9x18 when Metatron implored me to look at the subtext, and I realised it was an open invitation to do exactly this :P

* * *

Dean now gets to talk directly to Kevin, and I have spent the entire rewatch laughing at Kevin being fed up of Dean’s “in this life” speeches and here’s the sad kicker where it’s no longer funny but it IS what makes Kevin annoyed enough to finally manifest.

Dean manages to get out a real “sorry” but while he shows sympathy to Kevin:

> DEAN  
> Kevin, I’m sorry. You did not choose this life. You busted your ass, you lost everything, everyone you’ve loved… And your reward? Getting killed…

ends up still caught up in his own tragedy and not able to see beyond that… it makes him selfish and in a way this is good for his own personal development, as self-reflection and these negative emotions might be a terrible thing for him, but self-awareness is the only path to any sort of recovery or understanding of himself, and being on a character arc like this has to make him selfish, if only because as we finally get to demon!Dean, one of the points is just how MUCH was burdened on Dean, how much he gave himself away to others, and yes I watched 2x22 yesterday and I’m still weeping inside for Bobby sobbing at Dean about how little he cares about himself after he finds out Dean sold his soul… Dean needs to reach a better balance of this.

But on the other hand when it comes to empathy and relating to other people, especially those caught in his crossfire, it makes him absolutely shite and dealing with it:

> DEAN  
> On my watch. If I… It was on me. It was my fault, and… And there’s nothing I can do to make that right. I am so sorry. 

* * *

> KEVIN [still momentarily flickering in and out]  
> I couldn’t. I can’t. No one can. Heaven’s closed for business. Everyone who’s died since the angels fell are just stuck inside the veil, waiting. And it’s bad in here. Like DMV-line-times-infinity bad.
> 
> SAM  
> Well, I mean, what can we do?

wait 3 seasons.

* * *

Kevin WOULD be able to organise an information ring in the afterlife.

* * *

> KEVIN  
> You say you want to make it right? This is how.

Technically they get their absolution this episode, although I see a fair amount of absolution in 11x20 onwards around Chuck, and that includes a brief reminder of Kevin being truly moved on and that old damage finally repaired (see also: that gif of Billie doing her thing I just linked). In light of 11x23, finding Linda and reuniting her with Kevin has such a strong parallel in a dark, sad way to 11x23 and Mary being returned to Dean that I can’t help think that absolution does come here, e.g. Dean’s assertion that he’d “burn for it” is made right – yes he has to become a demon and all that to emerge out the other side of the dark part of his character arc, all caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfree style, and there’s a lot of symbolic weight elsewhere in his longer arc, but the whole thing of restoring mother and son together being the ~reward Dean gets for achieving cosmic balance tells me that this episode is absolutely key in Dean’s redemption arc… If only to show him that there might be a hope of making it right, even if he carries that weight much further (not listening to Kevin, still in his own pity party :P)

* * *

> SAM  
> I’m still stuck on the fact that we’re trying to summon a ghost named Candy. 

Dude, ghosts are just people. People can be called Candy. Sorry this job isn’t spooky enough for you.

… oh why do I even bother. This is where they sit there with all that electronic stuff set up and are bitching about if it’s ghosts or just the weather being cold. :P

This episode has a gross misappropriation of the lore to get the story told that I really approve of. Like, back in season 1, Candy could have been a whole episode for them by herself, and now she’s just a part of a bigger story, and they use all their skill and knowledge just to chat with her in a 5 minute portion of a bigger episode. Kind of like how 11x23 got praised for a ghost hunt in the middle, but before it was cool.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, she’s only been dead a week, right? So I figured she could use as much help as she can get, so…
> 
> [DEAN pulls the coffeemaker from his bag.] 
> 
> SAM  
> Really? 
> 
> DEAN  
> Whatever works.

This says so much about Dean it makes me die a bit :P What a dork. What a practical, clever  _dork_.

“Whatever works” also is a pretty good motto again for getting the story told in whatever way – using whatever tools are available to the writer, whatever tried and tested tropes they know and can be repurposed again in different contexts.

* * *

Cas meeting Bartholomew: he pulls Cas into a hug and Cas hugs back on instinct now Sam taught him how, but he’s obviously uncomfortable and drops the hug while Bartholomew is still clinging on a bit. The cliffhanger is the reveal they’re old friends, or at least Bartholomew is treating them that way, which of course asks a ton of questions but also again, we know Bartholomew was literally trying to have Cas killed back in 9x03, is responsible for all the bad treatment he had at the hands of angels or reapers in that episode and now he’s hugging him. He’s trying to construct the narrative where they’re old friends, as if that can magically change the way things were earlier in the season and put Cas back on a good footing with him for his manipulation. It’s almost a light version of what Metatron does – Metatron spins a whole story around Cas hoping to change the way Cas sees things.

I guess what they don’t get is that Cas isn’t easily manipulated… But what the angels SEE is an angel who fell and turned on Heaven so seems to be a turncoat and therefore maybe could be turned again… But what we know is how that happened, how Dean appealed to that same thing – the “mission” the angel in the start mentioned, that has ALWAYS been Cas’s guiding principle. The moment we ever got to really see inside Cas, in 4x07, is when he’s watching humanity, and all those comments he has to Uriel when they’re alone showing he cares, that he understands that disregarding humans is blasphemous – that their mission should be to save who they can, and that he was rooting for Dean all along to save the town.

I guess the question for Cas this season is “what will make you go back to war” when it comes to the angels, and the answer is humanity – no, Dean.

* * *

> SAM  
> You feel that? I think I felt a chill. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah. It’s ‘cause it’s cold.

I love their little diorama of Ouija board and 6-pack they’ve cracked into while they wait.

Filed under things Sam regrets ever saying:

> SAM  
> That’s your third unanswered voicemail. You ever think maybe he’s just not that into you?

Sam, no. Crowley’s super into him. He’s playing hard to get. Or currently in a meltdown over his unexpected human emotions, part of which is massive romantic frustration that he’s going to use Dean to fill the hole he’s discovered in his heart. Whatever it is, we’re closing in on Drowley remarkably quickly :P This isn’t even related to any of the main plot stuff where Crowley is used to have Dean on his hook, either for things to kill or because he has the first blade. Instead it’s a random example of things to come – but I think most of the times Dean is trying to get ahold of Crowley this season Sam makes some snarky comment about it.

* * *

Anyway, then we have Cas and Bartholomew talking some more – once again bringing up the season 6 angel war for Cas… I think Berens is pretty fascinated by it and what it did for Cas. 

In this case his leadership is being examined. Bartholomew admires him as a legendary leader for his skill and tactical prowess, but ethically they immediately have a divide – Cas wanted to fight a good war – if such a concept can even exist (oh boy I remember that lesson in Philosophy :P) but especially as it was a civil war, Cas trying to do as little harm as possible, even in season 6 before he truly began to feel the pain of killing other angels pre-Godstiel, it was always something he hated, a necessary evil to accomplish his goals (and part of what made him a good tactician that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill other angels – friends, those he considered close like family – for his ideologically motivated war…)

Then Bartholomew tells him not in so many words that even his own side, following him, were using his skill in battle to lead them, but his own side was making orders behind his back to kill captives (title drop! It’s relevant to both sides of the story – the point between Cas and Bartholomew in their history which means Cas will NEVER trust him or work with him as well as obviously referring to Linda and Crowley’s horrible storage unit idea) – basically undermining Cas’s idealism in the good angels and the ones who will follow him because of the belief in the mission. 

He thought the season 6 angels on his side were united under a belief as well. Bartholomew in a way is something Cas “created”, though of course he was put in the situation in the much much wider scene, the angel war is also still very much something he created, and so the after effects and the angels acting badly in whatever way as a result of it is his responsibility – something that him knowing and feeling it is part of what makes him SO good. (But also torments him. But compare and contrast this vs Dean self-pitying over Kevin earlier on)

Anyway

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> Word of your victory spread. You got called back to the garrison. You became the great Castiel… While I stayed behind, just a grunt.

This suggests a bit of pettiness on Bartholomew’s side, a resentment that he was never advanced for his part in it, which may have spurred him to take the initiative when the alternative orders came to kill the captives.

* * *

If Metatron has a part in this – as I suspect he is writing all the angel war stuff – I think he may have another one of those “character surprise him” moments all the way through this. Bartholomew is eventually going to get around to asking Cas to work with him to hunt Metatron, which is exactly what Metatron wants in 9x18 – all the angel factions working against him so he could turn them into the villains, and an early draft could easily have had Cas and Bartholomew turning on each other but only after much more public humiliation in some 9x22 reminiscent way. I don’t think he seriously considered Bartholomew might die here, that these speeches about following orders and wearing Cas down were meant to be the basis of their working relationship but then reapplied later:

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> I thought you’d gone insane, and I questioned your leadership, second-guessed every step of the campaign. But you were my commander. I held my tongue. I followed orders. Raphael fled. Most of his loyalists, dead or captured. Your gambit paid off. You…Won.

That’s obviously building him up to give him confidence to fight

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> I was ordered to kill those captives. You’ve been flying solo for so long, you’ve forgotten that’s what angels do. We follow orders.

And then aside from anything else I just discussed, reminds Cas that angels are subservient and meant to be controlled. He’s separated out from the rest, reminded of his leadership potential, BUT the personal vendetta between them about the captives is undermining Metatron’s point. 

He’s got this dialogue all set up just to flatter Cas into power, but it’s also reminding Cas that Bartholomew is an untrustworthy dick who kills captives and will take orders behind his back (aka Metatron underestimates Cas’s heart). Technically killing the captives aided the war against Raphael but it was not how Cas wanted to win. He had a lot of underhand methods in season 6 but a lot of it was just trying to out-power one archangel enough to defeat Raphael personally. It was a fight really just between them, and the angels picking sides. In 7x01 it’s portrayed as character-betraying overkill to murder every last one of Raphael’s followers, and that slaughter of angels HAUNTS Cas. And Bartholomew would apparently have happily just done it because he was just following orders or whatever (I don’t trust that phrase :P). So any message in here that would have attempted to do a Meta Fiction early, gets lost in the disgust Cas has for Bartholomew – instead of ending up with Cas inspired to fight or anything, we end up here:

> CASTIEL  
> Not you, though. Not anymore. 
> 
> BARTHOLOMEW  
> That’s right. I give [orders].

With Bartholomew rising out of his seat and looming over Cas and embracing HIMSELF as a leader and enjoying the power he’s clawed in the chaos Cas made, and Cas pretty much just trying to kill him via glaring.

* * *

Metatron yanks the page out of the typewriter, scrunches it up and throws it across the room.

* * *

We also have a Cas and Crowley parallel here:

> SAM  
> Crowley. And what do they want? 
> 
> CANDY  
> Said I was worth more alive than dead. But he stopped coming. Then it was just the other guy. We thought with just him…we’d try to escape. I ran so hard, so far, but…

Crowley keeps his captives alive for leverage. The little nasty demon who kills Candy is a Bartholomew parallel, killing and torturing the captives while Crowley is gone. Obviously Crowley’s still awful for doing this, but he’s being portrayed as the better of two evils – his idea of leverage and manipulation involves more misapplied empathy than being outright chaotic evil like Abaddon for example, who is powered only by cruelty. Crowley always has gains he’s planning to make, and that requires investments, understanding people, and understanding when they’re better to him alive, so it’s a very twisted way but the episode puts Cas and Crowley both in a position where they were keeping live prisoners and then an underling betrays them and kills them because they lack the same principles or morality about the captives.

Really I guess it’s an exploration of their innate humanity they’ve  _always_  had even before they get put onto their individual arcs coming right up against being human – Crowley may have the WORST parts of humanity, but it’s more of a human approach than his violent underling?

* * *

> DEAN  
> Human leverage. But why kill Candy? 
> 
> SAM  
> Well, you heard her. Uh, she tried to make a break for it. Maybe Crowley wanted to make an example. 
> 
> DEAN  
> No. No. The guy left in charge. Crowley wanted the victims alive. 
> 
> SAM  
> So, what, you want to give him a medal? I mean, Crowley’s the one who put them in the cells in the first place. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, I know. I’m just talking it out. You know, working the case. Businesslike.

… Dean, oh no. Oh no. You don’t have the omniscient POV I do on this. You’re fucked, mate, that’s what you are. The moment you say you’re “just” anything you’re protesting too much. YOU aren’t allowed to see Crowley as sympathetic or more “human” than the other demon

… too late, you’re totally gonna elope with him in 9 episodes and counting.

* * *

I forgot that line came next.

* * *

Hah the writing on the wall… “if God is with us, who can  be against us?” And I’m weirdly relating this to season 11 themes (because I know this was talked about at the time in context because what does this fandom do apart from read the writing on the walls :P) of the idea of God having favourites. Especially as this is right as Bartholomew is talking about commandeering the place for their own use and expanding their army by possessing all of Buddy’s lot regardless of vessel durability… Total disregard of human life and a sort of invasion of the bodysnatchers feeling going on here, all wrapped up in the religious mania of the people who worked here. Misuse of God’s name, and abuse of vessel consent. The idea of Heaven being on the wrong path, that God would be “with” them is ironic and wrong, and then we come later to God actually being back, and expressing his own favouritism – subtly – in Cas, who is of course in the here and now in opposition to Bartholomew and his smarmy confidence, so implicitly would have God ACTUALLY with him – since the quote is kind of asking for reflection on your enemies, these are the enemies Bartholomew has made.

* * *

The bit where Cas stops and glares at the angel is just the best Cas thing ever. Idk if that was meant to be SO overdramatic but he literally stops to scowl at him and the other guy stops to scowl back. It’s like the reverse of the romantic trope where the world spins around the lovers with the camera or something – it all just halts as they pass and you can see the evil eye passing between them. Enemies at first sight.

I would not want Cas glaring at me like that, that’s for sure. 

He just responds like for like to hostility… But while he’s on this solo angel vs angel adventure this episode is just full on hostility even to the angel in the cold open who turned out to be more like him than Cas realised – he attacks him first and asks questions later, and then is attacked in turn by Bartholomew’s people.

It’s dangerous times for our angel… guess this is also showing a side of him like his season 6 self we really couldn’t see a whole lot of IN season 6 – this time his motives are much clearer as he isn’t betraying anyone (even if the exact nature of his motivation is a twist Metatron’s waiting to reveal to us at the end :P) so we can at least see him talk to other angels without the horrible dialogue like in the Rachel confrontation in Frontierland where they couldn’t openly say ANYTHING about the twist… plus now it’s set safely down on Earth so there’s no need to wrangle the presence of Heaven there. In a way the story has come “down to earth” so we can see more of it :P

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> So, we’re friends here? 
> 
> BARTHOLOMEW  
> Yes.

They have this conversation in front of the dove aka peace sign

I fudging love Wanek’s directing *licks the screen*

* * *

Anyway here’s another challenge to what Cas wants or where he’s going:

> CASTIEL  
> And I’m free to go? 
> 
> BARTHOLOMEW  
> Of course. Though, I don’t know why you would. What’s out there for you, Castiel? What do you really expect to accomplish on your own? You’ll never find Metatron that way.

This is talking to him about his effort to fight the war, technically, but there’s a longish pause which lets it be again a question which is addressing much more, the whole story of Cas, really. The SUBTEXT is that it’s another part of the series of questions such as the one from 9x06 about how Cas wants to live. So in truth Bartholomew may be telling Cas he has no supporters that they know of, or no hope to win the war, but really it’s like, the whole deal, asking him the same questions in his whole human or angel arc.

* * *

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> I figured that’s why you were pursuing Rebecca, engaging with her follower. We have different methods, Cas, but we want the same thing – to find Metatron and restore our kind to heaven.

Ew calling him Cas. Bartholomew hates nicknames – I love the actor seeming to choke it out but he needs to come across friendly, and Cas using nicknames, even though it’s something other angels have done, from the start, does sort of make him more on the human end of the scale, especially when Dean is responsible for so much nicknaming.

Also Bartholomew assuming he knows what Cas wants.

* * *

Aah it’s a Castle storage where Crowley is keeping his captives. Which reminds me that Abaddon was outside one in 9x06… I wonder if Berens was implying that she’d been trying to find the captives and grab some of Crowley’s leverage. Just the “Castle storage” thing has so many connotations of the power struggle – they’re fighting for the castle on the hill.

* * *

And the Castle storage is pretty much always a trap or at least a trap is being sprung. And then as always the John Winchester associations. I think this parallel is louder in 11x15 of Crowley just randomly having a storage unit of the Crowley equivalent of John’s crap he collected, but it’s still linking them via storage unit (and of course we saw John’s, with Crowley in it, just in 9x11)

* * *

Sam and Dean having fun with Dean mocking the little pasty hipster glasses guys who work there is pretty great. 

I can’t really trust Dean’s attempts to be funny in this part of the season as not being about trying to win Sam back over and end the fight, but when they’re working together rather than stewing in their own private spaces in the Bunker, they are obviously forced to interact and set aside the fight for work so it’s Dean’s chance to build bridges.

I have to wonder if this episode is implying the Bunker is getting in the way of them reconciling easily, because they are given so much space to ignore each other and we begin and end with that isolation in focus. When they were always trapped in the car their arguments could blow out faster, which is maybe why this is one of their longest lasting cold shoulder spells (even the magnitude of the argument aside) – in the beginning of season 8, even, they may have been arguing on and off for the first half of the season but they were by and large trapped together – 8x10 especially ending with a strong sense of them being trapped – but even in the earlier parts we always saw them arriving at jobs and so on, their nomadic life forcing them to be civil and they were always at least sort of on this level like where they’re still having fun and being dorky brothers on muscle memory even if they’re pissed… They’ve always had the option to blow up and storm off and leave each other to work alone for a bit, but that also forces actual talking and reconciliation. I’m not saying their old ways were entirely good because when they’re working together that long they have to repress what’s upsetting them for the sake of sharing a car as their entire personal living space, and it can lead to a huge blow up when they don’t talk for the sake of working together (and a lot of MotW randomly force them to address the issues they’ve been stewing on as a result of that).

But the isolation of the Bunker might be an extreme too far in the other direction of stopping them from talking, and especially as they’re still getting used to having all that space to themselves, it’s giving them a new option to be passive aggressively distant in a way they never had before, while not totally severing the ties like blowing up and storming off would. It’s a very uncomfortably balanced dynamic, and Sam and Dean are showing in this episode that Sam especially will make jokes or laugh at Dean’s jokes when they’re working together no matter what, even if he’ll storm off at the end of the episode, and if this sort of space suits what he needs, it’s killing Dean as we see in the opening and close of the episode where Dean is the one in focus as feeling isolated and miserable.

* * *

It’s definitely better for them in the long run to have their own permanent rooms and a sense of boundaries though :P

* * *

This is very distracting because I keep pausing on Dean’s scruff x that outfit combination to type because why not, but then it’s too distracting to type.

I think the biggest crime against humanity is that Cas didn’t interact with Dean while he looked like this because that random angel from the opening of the episode would not be the only one slammed up against something if Cas had seen Dean being so freakin’ hot.

* * *

Yes humanity as in “humanity” :P This is season 9, just always assume when I type it…

* * *

Dean does the thing where he picks up the random scythe in the storage facility, and honestly, considering they also find boxes with like stuffed toys or whatever in them, the fact there was a workbench here with the old twisted hand scythe, that HAS to be intentionally placed there because it almost does seem like the sort of thing Crowley would keep.

Wait what am I doing saying “almost”

* * *

Not like Cas doesn’t already dislike and mistrust the guy but we finally get the turn around –

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> But with you by my side – the new boss and the ultimate rebel working together – think of the message that would send to would-be dissidents. They’d finally understand that resistance is futile. Think of the bloodshed we could avert… What a united angelkind could accomplish in heaven… Elsewhere.
> 
> [The doors open and ANGEL #1 and ANGEL #2 drag in the angel from the funeral. BARTHOLOMEW kneels and puts an angel blade to his throat.]
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Bart, what are you doing?
> 
> BARTHOLOMEW  
> What needs to be done. I’m gonna torture the rebel, find out what he knows, then kill him. And you’re going to help.

Cas isn’t given a chance to talk before they bring in the latest captive (because that’s what this episode is about, and in between scenes, Dean has been captured by the demon kid who seems ready to torture and kill him too… never mind Sam is also now locked in with Linda and of course in the grander scheme Bartholomew is pretty much holding Cas hostage with a very threateningly phrased “sure you can go whenever” :P) - there’s a lot in this episode where Cas doesn’t get to voice his opinion or answer a question. You HAVE to ask the subtext for an explanation.

Anyway “elsewhere” makes it very clear that Bartholomew is as bad a threat as Metatron not just to the angels but to humanity too.  His “what needs to be done” is way less morally compromised like the way some of the other “did what I had to do” choices already this season were emotionally driven. He just wants to do it and is using that as the excuse, just like he chose to kill the captives back during the war.

* * *

I mean in the here and now he also sucks because he’s torturing and killing angels, specifically ones who are strongly associated with Cas’s own personal philosophy (aka HOW does he think this is going to make Cas friends with him when he already knows they have a philosophical rift over this), since that’s one of those blatantly obvious personal moral compromise moments – Cas chooses that it’s not worth it to go after Metatron on that sort of compromise, but he’s *already* personally morally compromised himself from stealing the grace.

 ~~I’m fairly sure I saw someone once in the immediate aftermath of season 9 or thereabouts (so of course I didn’t reblog it~~ ) [@justanotheridijiton](https://tmblr.co/msbbZom6stVUaSwCo2j0eeQ) found the thing

<http://amagicbeyond.tumblr.com/post/95058336112/draped-in-the-flag-of-heaven-all-for-one-man>

^ tallying up Cas’s moral compromises this season and pointing out how true it holds to what Metatron says about doing it all for Dean – 9x09 he may power himself up and as a result be able to compete in season 9’s angel Hunger Games again as one of them, but he does it to warn Dean about “Zeke” and then legs it to the Bunker to help and this is several episodes later before we see him dealing with angel politics again. And then this episode doesn’t inspire him to join a faction, even the one offered to him at the end, or to steal Bartholomew’s resources NOW. He goes back for them after he gets his angel army in 9x18, and again that decision to raise an army comes only after he sees Dean with the Mark, which is his turning point in the episode after having rejected Metatron all the way through it.

(And then of course the last run of episodes were all turned over enough times because of their events which actually put it all out there on the page, literally because Metatron stopped to tell us what had apparently just happened in the last 2 episodes :P)

* * *

Sam picks the worst possible time to imply to Linda that Kevin is dead – I guess he couldn’t live with pretending he was okay even until they were on the other side of the door. Especially since he’s also personally hurt by Kevin’s death in an intimate way to make it much harder to pretend for the sake of it that Kevin is okay off somewhere… which okay he can’t have loved Kevin as much as his own mother does, but he’s carrying trauma for his death worse than most deaths they’ve ever had of people around them who they cared for or even felt responsible for, since as Sam eventually says, he still remembers it and constantly has to deal with the trauma of literally feeling himself smite Kevin (there was a good meta about Sam going around recently about how he compartmentalises, sometimes TOO much to the point of disassociation… Happily working with Gadreel for the sake of a powerful and useful ally in 9x23 is definitely one of those things since he names Gadreel as a friend in literally the same conversation he tells Dean this about Kevin’s death…)

* * *

I keep forgetting Sam and Dean are in this episode

* * *

I know it’s not exactly difficult to guess but I like that Dean is left to intuit that the kid is talking about Crowley just from the impersonation of the accent and reciting Crowley’s recruitment speech. Just something about making Dean intuitively recognise Crowley? For the theme of writing and interpretation. Or this kid being suckered into the demonic internship by Crowley’s persuasive rhetoric.

I’ve seen meta comparing this guy and demon!Dean with their job dissatisfaction and just wanting to kill stuff and be a young carefree demon with the wind in their hair while Crowley wants them to have a job. I’m sure it’s only Crowley’s personal interest in the two of them differing that changes his whole sales pitch from this:

> DEL  
> “Trust me,” he says. “You definitely want to be a part of this – "a chance to get in on the ground floor of my operation, "a real learning experience. Consider it a stepping stone, my lad – like an internship.”

To Crowley in 10x01 giving Dean the “pls be my consort in Hell” speech.

Just the phrasing here:

> DEL  
> Am I not a young, vital demon with basic demon needs and rights?

While he’s complaining about his need to kill (aka Dean) the whole “vital” part reminds me of 9x17 and Crowley calling Dean “virile” as well. Not exact synonyms but roughly the same meaning, with one a bit more innuendo-y than the other.

* * *

Listen, I know I’ve already revised my policy like 3 times on how season 9 had no chill with the Drowley and we should have all seen this coming from space, and this is BERENS, but… yiiikes

> DEL  
> And when I call Crowley to inform him that I’ve single-handedly caught the Winchesters, if he even answers my call, think I’ll get a thank you? Ha!
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah, you’re right, kid. He won’t give you credit. If anything, he’ll be pissed.
> 
> DEL  
> What? 
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, me and Crowley, we’re – we’re tight now. Thick as thieves. Saw him just last month. We, uh, had a grand ol’ time.

(yiiiiiiikes)

I’m reminded of the early season 10 demons who were so pissed off at Crowley wasting time with his new boy toy to the point of enraged self-immolation for about the same sentiment about how terrible their King was.

But DEAN. I know I’ve not really been back to season 9 except for watching odd episodes out of sequence (and mostly for returning characters, like Jody, Donna, Charlie, or for DeanCas aka watching 9x06 and 9x18 on a loop) actually SINCE season 10 but… I’ve mostly seen the “we should have known” stuff about Drowley focussing on Crowley’s seduction and Sam’s teasing or Cas rolling his eyes about “bromancing over the first blade” or whatever. Dean’s side of it hasn’t really been spoken about that much except in the start of season 10 it was clear Crowley represented freedom and lack of responsibility, until he didn’t (that offering Dean the world speech and trying to get him to act as a personal hellhound which eventually caused Dean to snap and leave Crowley for good because ew a job :P) and that was more because of what he was saying to SAM in 10x03 about how he burdened him and WAS the job. (I can’t remember if he literally said that, but, like, implications.)

Now, I know Dean is talking out of his arse here and despite trying to phone Crowley for info this is TECHNICALLY a rescue operation where Crowley is the overall antagonist just for setting it all up. Obviously he never helped them before with this, however much he claimed to have warned Kevin, and he hasn’t freed Linda since gaining his own freedom along with the knowledge that she’s no longer useful to him; the demon kid is right, that they’ve pretty much been abandoned by Crowley as he’s clearly lost all interest in his old ventures…

Before they even get there, though, Dean is excusing Crowley’s part in it – seeing the same thing as what’s in the Cas vs Bartholomew parallel and even recognising at once that this evil twerp is exactly what Cas sees when he looks at Bartholomew. Aka, Dean seeing Crowley in a way which blurs  _positively_  with Cas. And now he’s falling back on an uncertain gamble which he really would hope wouldn’t involve Crowley at all, but is using at LEAST a half-truth of personal closeness to Crowley to swing this in his favour. I’ve always seen it as a manipulation in the past, plain and simple, with the fact they HAD worked together in 9x11 to lend Dean either the idea or at least some confidence in saying it (hey, demon bathroom walls. Who knows what gets talked about).

But now I’m not so sure that Dean confidently referencing how he’s tight with Crowley combined with that, the phoning him and expecting an answer for HELP and all (how quickly this changes from 8x22 and Crowley phoning them as an antagonist…), this is sort of the start of the new way Crowley is used as an ally, even if he’s not present in the episode, we know Dean gets very confident and casual about calling Crowley for help, to the point where Sam makes fun or Cas in 10x23 is VERY eye-rolling and snarky about how he’s the last person who doesn’t have Crowley on speed dial (I was just reading [@k-vichan](https://tmblr.co/m4FImMInGlX_QoCekzgv66w)’s final instalment of the [co-dependency meta](http://k-vichan.tumblr.com/post/149651520829) which also served to remind me of how snarky he was about Dean and Amara in the early part of the season… picking especially on 11x06 because hey Berens. Actually thinking of that, I’m pretty sure the deleted scene in 10x14 between Cas and Crowley started because they were bitching about running errands for Dean and that turned into the bitch slapping over who was Dean’s boyfriend… I’m having a lot of feelings about Cas bitterly in love with Dean right now >.>)

It may be mostly a bluff roll from Dean based on a loose fact, but for where this goes, and specifically how Dean ends up acting towards and about Crowley, this description is actually nail on the head for how he and Crowley end up relating to each other, especially with not just Crowley agreeing to help all the time, but Dean specifically KNOWING he can call on Crowley and get help whenever he needs it. Maybe it’s just an omen… maybe Dean already sort of knows, or feels the implication of what he has with Crowley now. He recognised it in 9x11 before they even left the bar (when he hits the flower away), and he wouldn’t be calling if he didn’t think there was a chance he could talk Crowley over…

(I have a lot of feelings about how that parallels Cas always feeling like a tool etc and how Dean genuinely cares for him but that deleted scene in 10x14, Cas and Crowley compare themselves and the running around they do, both on Dean’s hook in a way, even if Dean loves Cas and has a much more complicated approach to Crowley, THEY can see the comparison and it doesn’t look good to Cas, knowing Dean has another powerful supernatural entity that can still teleport while Cas can’t at his beck and call…however much Dean doesn’t *just* use Cas but cares for him too, it’s one of many small things that thoughtlessly build up for Cas when it comes to his self worth or knowing how much Dean actually cares about him)

* * *

> DEL  
> So, that’s where he’s been. Out partying with humans, with hunters?! While I languish here in this go-nowhere, no-kill joke of a job.
> 
> DEAN  
> “Partying” is a bit of an exaggeration.

Pfft :P

* * *

Oh great the next scene is also a “chug your drink” do what I had to do scene.

Amazingly, I don’t recall anyone ever talking about this bit of dialogue:

> CASTIEL  
> Who I was, what I did, that’s not who I am.

As a parallel to Cain, and what he said in 9x11:

> CAIN  
> I’ve tried… I’ve tried, Colette, to see myself as you did… But I know who I am –  _What_  I am…

But again I was like, 4 episodes late to the fandom to catch discussion of this, at this point, so it probably got mentioned then. Of course Cas is talking about murdering his own kind – NOT his original sin. Uriel started it with show events, and Anna even got the kill in that episode; I can’t recall Cas killing angels until 5x01 and of course it seems historically angels may have fought each other – if only because they already owned angel-killing blades before we ever met them :P But it ties him to Cain directly, like the bees thing did, when it comes to their complicated feelings about murder and their own self-loathing. Cain and Cas both have an understanding of their histories that they have tried to avoid, but circumstances always push them to it. For Cas, fighting in the angel war is teased as as bad as Cain starting up murdering again with this direct comparison of language. By and large Cas is in the Colette role to Dean, and I think he has a sort of arc of how far he’s willing to go (the stealing the grace thing is mentioned here as well as coming up in 9x22 as a monstrous act although it’s still working with the Winchesters that really tests the other angel’s tolerance for him)…

But to go back to the bees, season 7 Cas and Cain’s retirement have the most in common, and the mass-graves in 10x14 were paralleled directly to Cas and all the dead angels in 7x01. In this way, Cas too is living Cain’s life in reverse before it was cool; he has very complicated feelings about Heaven and his guilt for killing the angels is still huge and a powerful way to manipulate him up to 8x23 or guilt for the fall to push him around a bit this season, but as I was saying, his motivations this season are turning further and further to motivations not for redemption with the angels (9x22 honestly is the end of that even if he drags it out a few more seasons, he loses credibility and is hanging on by the skin of his teeth and Hannah’s good will in season 10) but to his conflict over choosing humanity/the Winchesters/Dean.

For Cas that repentance has mostly made him look at himself and he can say this about himself:

> CASTIEL  
> I’m not a murderer.

Ironically BECAUSE of all the “I did what I had to do” moments, which pretty much every single angel Cas kills fits under, but his personal morals about it mean A: he doesn’t use it as a justification so much as a way to understand that he’s not just murdering angels for the hell of it and B: just because he “had” to do it, doesn’t stop him feeling remorse about literally every single one that dies. Bartholomew using killing a captive as a trial for Cas, with the angel helpless in his power, will never be something where Cas “had” to kill that angel, but knowing that Bartholomew is THIS dangerous and will remorselessly kill other angels, killing HIM is something that is “I did what I had to do” for Cas, and even THAT is only when he WON’T STOP. Even this awful angel, he doesn’t want to kill him and won’t until he really genuinely has NO choice, so even besting him in the fight, he gives him another chance to live because he hates killing angels that much…

Anyway in a way I feel like this is pretty much just to draw a parallel between Dean and Cas just for the sake of doing it – Cas’s feelings on this are well-established, but this is reciting many of the season 9 themes over again in a context to do with Cas, drawing him into the story and the web of these themes and using a fairly isolated example from the main story to explore the themes openly with characters who can spell it all out. Bartholomew goading Cas to try and become a killer is met with Cas refusing to do it, in a very powerful moment of choice, one of my favourite Cas moments (I LOVE this episode for Cas I say, sobbing, for the hundredth time).

Cas is given a chance to deny that nature and show that he wouldn’t kill at LEAST in cold blood, and to expressly discuss the nature of BAD choices aka what’s ruining the “do what had to be done” thing as justification as it is a BAD way to approach it because unlike with Cas here, they rarely explore WHY it “had” to be done, e.g. Dean can’t get to the truth of why he couldn’t let Sam die, and kicked off the Gadreel thing. Cas himself won’t address his “did what I had to do” stuff when it come to the choices that eventually lead to Metatron’s gloating dialogue about Cas and humanity…

> CASTIEL  
> I was never free to leave. My only choice was to obey or be killed. Well, I choose. 
> 
> [CASTIEL hands the angel blade back to BARTHOLOMEW]

This actually is so powerful a moment it breaks the game, and so though Cas kills Bartholomew and it’s a *genuine* “did what I had to do” where Cas’s morality about fighting is applied correctly – for what morality you can even have when it comes to this, but killing to save a net gain lives is how the show works and it was the “net gain” thing that Crowley was ruining by killing the people they save back in 8x22 so their only accomplishment was killing the monsters and nothing more – I can imagine from Cas’s perspective he hasn’t got the objectivity to see it this way, but just that he had to kill ANOTHER angel, and it was a “I did what I had to do” which Bartholomew has made utterly toxic with the way he talks about “having” to kill his latest captive. And so even though Bartholomew is terrible, this still weighs on him as much as any death.

(The worst part is that Bartholomew is using Cas’s angel blade for all this – I’m pretty sure he gives Cas back the one he confiscated from him at the start, then Cas gives it back and Bartholomew uses the same one to kill that angel)

(Wait no the worst bit is how the poor dead angel is stripped down with his shirt open and cut up and then stabbed pretty much identically to how Cas was killed in 9x03. Not only is he representing Cas’s philosophies but he’s dying for them as Cas did – or at least in the way Cas feels responsible for everything and the angel fall is all going back to his own need to redeem himself)

(Also Bartholomew is responsible for 9x03 so. Reminder there for Cas – some additional trauma for him to be reminded of here, but extra motivation for revenge, and this is probably too subtle to count as Bucklemming un-fucking, but it at least offers Cas some subtextual catharsis for what happened in that episode, to avenge this poor proxy for himself.)

* * *

Then we go back to Del getting ready to kill Dean because subtle.

(Is it always Berens episodes in particular which are SO good with the back and forth between scenes? I feel like I comment on this all the time and I remember there was meta about this from 10x14 as well)

* * *

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> As your refusal makes perfectly clear, you always thought you were better than me. Shall we put your superiority to the test once and for all?

His problem is assuming this has been personal the whole time when he’s the one obsessed with Cas who grabbed him off the street, gave him the sales pitch, and is now annoyed he won’t play.

* * *

He loosens his tie ready to fight Cas which is such a funny posh fisticuffs sort of gesture – a “fight me!!” for the kind of men who always wear a suit whenever they leave the house. Very human, as angels usually seemed totally oblivious to what they were wearing even for fights, but pretty fitting for his characterisation.

Cas, of course, nobly takes a few punches, and tries one more time to martyr himself:

> CASTIEL  
> No. Angels fighting angels has to stop somewhere. Might as well stop with me.

Except he still responds on instinct to stop Bartholomew killing him… which TBH is 9x06 and Cas choosing to live.  

* * *

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> What are you now? A penitent?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I’m nothing.

*wails*

Although Cas choosing not to define himself by angel factions is good – this also frees him up to define himself how HE wants to be defined and for Cas the question all of Carver era is just asking what he is and what he wants to be. He doesn’t technically answer it but he does end up choosing to be with the Winchesters at the end of all things. Which after everything he was put through is a “good enough” as far as I’m concerned and we’ll see what happens in season 12 :P

I do get the feeling though that Cas means “Nothing” in the more self-deprecating way though.

* * *

> BARTHOLOMEW  
> You never did understand, Castiel. There can be no peace without bloodshed.

Aaaaand so Cas stabs him.

Thankfully Cas resolves this season without stabbing Metatron, upholding SOME principles (someone has to end this season NOT on a descent arc or obvious moral tailspin :P), but of course with Gadreel killing himself to let Cas do that – so blood was shed after all. Just in a sort of let people do it for him way – that threat of the bombers in 9x22 of Cas’s cult becoming so fanatical they would try and win the war like that, eventually it actually DOES happen. It reminds me of one of the arcs in Doctor Who about how he is a pacifist but all the people around him are drawn in by his own personality cult and will kill for him and make the hard choices he won’t do. Not that Cas has a problem killing when he has to, but this seems to be a blight of heroes making a moral stand NOT to kill: the story always demands blood, and so if they won’t shed it, someone else will on their behalf.

Anyway then Cas storms out which has been meta’d to death so much and even had a fresh go-over of it in the meta community while I was working on this :P

* * *

Ooh I also know after recently going through said tag, that I have a very long post about them letting Linda kill the demon that tortured her.

The demon uses the “I was just following orders” excuse which just in this season has been firmly established as total crap.

(which, incidentally, especially since it’s followed by Linda saying “take me to my son” again and storming off – I know I defend Gadreel a lot because I love him, but he’s wandering around killing on order, and “I did what I had to do” blurs into this. I think the difference again like with Cas is about how he doesn’t torture anyone or show a sign of enjoying it TOO much and started off conflicted about doing it, but there’s a fair amount of vindictive lashing out and retribution for the pain Gadreel suffered in his actions, and he’s taking it out on the other angels though he killed the one angel most responsible for it almost immediately. It’s presented differently from a “I was just following orders” but considering that’s what his own torturer said, veering close to it is part of the tragedy in his own arc, and of course Gadreel’s arc mirrors Dean’s, especially with ironic character-deteriorating tragedy happening to them)

* * *

Anyway thinking of tragedy, KEVIIIN

*paws at the screen*

Considering season 12 and how it will start, this absolutely has not quite yet reached Peak Awful for that comparison but just imagining the whole Returned Mom Is Actually Alive comparison between Dean and Kevin and this is Pretty Bad

> DEAN  
> We got her. She’s alive. She’s here. But we wanted to give you a moment to… You know, process. 
> 
> KEVIN  
> Oh. I, uh… Does she know? 
> 
> MRS TRAN  
> Kevin? Hello, son. 
> 
> KEVIN   
> Hey, Mom. 
> 
> MRS TRAN [crying]  
> Oh.

I mean Mary’s going to presumably have a horrible time of it but at least her son isn’t actually a ghost.

* * *

Well, Dean at least. Who knows wtf will be up with Sam next season. Maybe he’ll be Kevin in this scenario.

* * *

:3 :3

Follow for more cheerful season 12 speculation

* * *

Sure glad Kevin didn’t go vengeful and hurt his mom, but the fact Dean suggests it here is pretty specific a concern and well-chosen to be mentioned. His descent arc is paralleled with Bobby’s as a vengeful ghost; Kevin has an advantage that he didn’t come back FOR revenge, rather he is just another person in this episode who is trapped. Of course this message is another Dean should be listening to himself as his soul deteriorates in much the same way a spirit does and getting worse when Dean kills aka like how Bobby worsened whenever he saw the object of his vengefulness… Gadreel, too, is later described as seeming to have unfinished business.

* * *

Cas hangs out at Rebecca’s grave & he tells her he admires that she tried a different way.

Then:

> CASTIEL  
> I don’t want to fight. But if I have to, I will.

Cas having learned a lesson this episode which I think is a fairly healthy way to process “I did what I had to do” – Bartholomew if nothing else taught him the stakes in this specific war, which is a strong motivation for Cas to continue to try to find the bloodless ways to deal with it.

The angel from Bartholomew’s people approaches him with a hand on the shoulder – not the “good” shoulder.

It’s left vague about if Cas accepts these new followers but of course next time we see him he’s still working alone with limited resources, and refusing to accept his burden. It’s the first time we hear this this season:

> CASTIEL  
> I’m sorry. I’m no leader.

But it’s basically the whole point of 9x18 from Metatron’s POV, to get him to accept that burden. This episode of course reminding us of season 6 & 7 for Cas says exactly WHY he won’t be a leader to the angels, because his past form has been so catastrophic, especially leading wars from an underdog position. Basically, doing all the talking so 9x18 can pay attention to other stuff, like murdering the viewer at home directly through the screen.

In a way Cas’s willingness to lead being forced into question and making him play through to the end of Metatron’s stupid story is probably kind of good therapy for Cas, because season 9 is the end of this specific subplot for Stuff Messing Cas Up – he still has pleeeenty of issues with his family, but I guess he at least deals with what’s going to be basically 3 seasons old trauma by the end of this season – season 8 was clear it was the aftermath of Gamble Era that was making Cas suicidal at the thought of returning to Heaven, but his later trauma at least comes from a more inward direction, with his relationships heaping up most of the suffering >.>

* * *

Oh wait this is all still going on:

> SAM  
> And you were ours. And we failed you. I – 
> 
> KEVIN  
> Sam. I know that wasn’t you. Go put a blade in that asshat who possessed you and we’ll call it square.

So yeah Kevin tries to make them let go of their issues over his death, and I guess Dean does listen to him by stabbing Gadreel that one time, but basically yeah they don’t really get their closure here, or at the end of the season, and:

> DEAN  
> You can thank us when we get you to heaven where you belong. 

Again, why it was SO important to show Kevin ascending to Heaven when it came to things Dabb seeeriously needed to get cleared off the table so that he could get to work telling his story with as much closure as they could cram in

* * *

Blah, blah, Kevin tells them to get over it – not just HIS death but THEIR fight which they’ve made his death into. (Kinda, I mean, Sam is also pissed about the possession trickery :P)

Dean as usual is kinda much more ready to get over the fight and forget it ever happened but Sam storms off. He hesitates at his door, but then slams it anyway. A brief flicker of being willing to maybe not storm off, but nah. Still angry.

* * *

Dean goes to hang out with his only friend, the pink ipod. ALSO meta’d to death but catch me not smiling about that :P

* * *

Anyway of course that means Dean drowns out the world around him some more, still also not ready to address the bigger problems.

* * *

(But at least he has a cute ipod to do so)


	15. 9x15

Or:  what we have here is a formation of of words in the shape of a pile… 

While I’m amazed the Ghostfacers made it this far, I’m actually kind of more impressed that I’m pretty sure Sam’s wearing a shirt he still owns now in the bit of recap from season 1

* * *

of course we wrap up their intro with their fame whoring character trait under the spotlight, but the iconic line of “having sex… with  _girls_ ” as the final word on that is hilarious. That was back in season 1, and of course Ed (I think, I can never tell them apart before actually watching an episode with them in :P) ends up with his whole thing with Corbett in their other major appearance in s3, which seriously suggests he was in love in return because why not, this blog is all about taking such things seriously; he learned some things about himself that night, only now they’re back, being used as “serious” characters… So he is a strongly implied queer character.

While they seem to be a Sam and Dean parallel which is so heavy-handed it hurts, I’m more inclined to argue they’re a (unrequited maybe) romantic relationship on the rocks being paralleled to Sam and Dean’s fight, which is of course a thing that happens all the time - romantic parallels to the brother’s relationship - and don’t HAVE to mean they’re implying it’s romantic, any more than friend or sibling parallels which seem way more DeanCas are saying anything about them… (e.g. in 9x13, several of the ways to wrangle the 3 main players at the spa I had the married couple as Sam and Dean or Sam and Cas, as well as the sibling relationship as Dean and Cas from another angle)

Figured I should put a disclaimer before launching into this because Ed’s pretty blatantly in love with Harry (unless it’s the other way around) in my eyes, by this episode, but of course the bro parallel is the whole point of this episode, so you know, just setting out where my brain is on this in one place before it gets super confusing why I’m saying two things at once :P

* * *

Anyway the rest of the recap is the Sam and Dean fight, which for some reason is visually represented by the actual physical fight in 9x01 between Sam and the spectre of Dean he conjured in his own coma dream, which is either quick editing to show conflict, or way deeper than I meant to give them credit for… e.g. they fight the shadows of each other that they are held hostage to in their own minds when it comes to their perception of each other and the crippling influence they have on each other… Demon!Dean eventually comes for Sam more for the oppression he felt from the abstract concept of being Sam’s caretaker than for an actual need to kill Sam as a person for something he just did. Sam in 9x01 conjures a Dean who represents the whole codependency thing, of Dean not letting him die, and then has to fight him for the right to go die. 10x23, Dean nearly has to kill Sam on principle for the damage they would hypothetically cause if left to exist unchecked, etc

not totally sure the recap editor meant to go so deep, but hey, everything is a thing even if you don’t start out meaning it… I notice 2 of the examples I instantly thought of come from after this season >.> That’s definitely a thing 9x01 set up but no one’s paid it much attention since :P

* * *

Ghostfacers are always meta episodes for a variety of reasons, and in the season 1 episode I kind of wrote a whole essay on that before I even got started. Since the Ghostfacers take a 6 year break from the show, they miss its entire meta evolution from “just really friggin’ self aware” to “actual fourth wall annihilation” so coming back to them and their type of meta episode it’s actually pretty quaint, but of course it still provides commentary… I remember a lot of posts that were quite critical of the message, especially as the show and fandom seemed to be in a snit with each other in season 9, as a result of 9x03 (Buckleming stirred this up again with 9x21, right when I was still really new to the fandom, and had basically no idea what was going on or why people were upset :P). I still feel like Robbie had to single-handedly put it all back together in 10x05 anyway. 

I’m tired and the weather is still too hot, so I’m giving this episode an amnesty unless it completely winds me up :P

* * *

I just went to check my tag for this episode to see if there was any chance the meta about the flower wallpaper had made it onto my blog and I think honestly this is a great yet terrible episode tag in the time preceeding the rewatch (and I honestly don’t have a whole lot of gifs to reblog from here):

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/9x15/chrono>

I may still find that post in 9x22 when I get there, because the girl is wearing a t-shirt with a doggie on it:

and I’m pretty sure the version of the post I saw was linking the flowers and all the red and pink to Dean (via his ipod and canon love of pink shit and hey look from stuff on screen that’s not recap, we go from Dean’s ipod last episode immediately to this girl and her phone) and the dog from Cas’s fake Heaven Metatron made as part of the Dean imagery, because 9x05. The links are all fairly clear, and probably serve mostly as potential death foreshadowing for Dean, with the take-it-as-you-will snark about her dying in her closet.

* * *

Oh, okay, I was wrong, Dean wears the shirt he dies in in the dog episode, and at least the opening here. 

Not like I didn’t literally just mention the dog episode and a death omen.

I suspect this is something like Cain’s house - uncanny neat storytelling in set stuff, but leaves you squinting if whoever picked the shirt out was thinking about its prior appearances with that much deep thought.

But you know, intent is dead at this point of the media experience, so *I* get to weave a clever thread through it all :P

* * *

Bit more immediate symbolism: Sam starts this episode in the library, the more “home” feeling room. Dean comes up to the threshold from the war room and hovers there, not willing to cross it while talking to Sam about this:

> SAM  
> You want me to come with?
> 
> DEAN  
> Do you want to come?
> 
> SAM  
> On a hunt? Why wouldn’t I?

Incidentally betraying that Dean still thinks of hunting as a family thing and “just” working with Sam basically doesn’t compute - Crowley got him by working a job with him specifically playing off the “family business” side of things that Dean seems completely unable to extract from context. So Dean feeling

> DEAN  
> I don’t know, man. ‘Cause lately with you, up is down and down is sideways, you know? I-I – I don’t know what you want.

kind of conveys a lot of the mixed signals - stuff like from last episode where he and Sam were making jokes and laughing together. And as I was saying, being in the Bunker emphasises their sense of aloneness and separation, while working together each time is a tiny step to reconciliation and to Dean, giving them a chance to be siblings again because he literally can’t extract how family functions from hunting. 

Anyway, Sam says he’ll come, and Dean finally crosses the threshold into their family space to show him.

(I think Sam is wearing the boring grey shirt he will come to regret by mid season 12 or whenever he’s finally allowed a wardrobe change…)

* * *

> SAM [looking at the selfie the girl took with the figure in the background]  
> Who’s the wallflower?

because the walls… are covered in flowers… hahaha

I shouldn’t even point out their bad puns. It probably only encourages them.

* * *

I’m weirdly glad the Ghostfacers van is still theirs. I know it’s a generic white van, but it reminds me of how the Winchesters nearly owned the VW van, so I like to think in that AU the Ghostfacers had an Impala :P

Anyway their appearance on the scene immediately gives Sam and Dean a ~common enemy~ to be pissed with, and that will help no end forgetting their own fight for the time being.

* * *

Ed’s wearing pretty much the photo negative of the plaid Dean was wearing:

(pictured: navy blue & white plaid with thin red crosses)

(pictured: red and dark grey/black plaid with thin white crosses)

and he has a blue phone instead of a pink phone/ipod

* * *

He’s also the one who’s trying to get Harry back to focusing on the job while he’s distracted, and nearly quit, and it will turn out he’s the one who majorly wronged Harry by making up Thinman to stop the inevitable breaking up of the band, or clinging desperately to him UNABLE to let him go. In this way he comes across definitely as the Dean parallel with Thinman as a Gadreel parallel - something that got way out of hand and then people died, like, for real.

Harry, though, is distracted by an ex, harping on his frustrated love life, and creating a sort of love triangle where Ed is competing for his attention, which doesn’t even fit a wincest reading of this in the same timeframe because Sam was never romantically distracted - from Sam’s POV relatively little happened to him in season 9 until it suddenly all did, and since 9x11 “not much” in the way of notable life events has continued happening to him. I suppose you could track this all the way back to the start of Carver era and have Amelia in the mix, but even that was upstaged dramatically by Sam’s jealousy of Benny, since that made it to crunch time in the season finale while I don’t think Amelia was mentioned more than twice after the split. It’s definitely a fear of losing Harry anyway - to a “real life” here, in a parallel to Dean, maybe just losing Sam at all.

Maybe Ed represents them both, with their misguided idea of who the other is as Harry, BOTH equally capable of doing some Thinman style stunt (aka a mirror any codependency-related action) to preserve their relationship or being unable to deal with things that would split them apart, from death to secret vampire BFFs… or, of course, if you clicked through to my 9x15 tag, you’d have seen the Destiel gifset sarcastically bouncing off of:

> ED  
> Yeah. Uh, it – it could a platonic… arm that’s touching her.

e.g. no it’s totally not when Dean n Cas do it to each other. :P But yeah, hands on shoulders is  _the_ Destiel thing, and of course Cas was mentioned in Sam’s list of fears of abandonment by Dean in 8x23, and while the jealousy subplot I still think is over by 9x11, at least for majorly affecting the plot, the exploration of the character stuff is still ongoing (like, I think I brought this up again for some of the parallels in 9x13). 

And of course with Dean with the Mark, Sam is now the one due an overreaction to save him, which turns into Sam’s whole season 10 arc, but in season 9 is basically holding Sam to the “same circumstances, I wouldn’t do the thing” so while the Thinman is a mirror of Dean’s mistakes he’s already made, it’s also a warning for the mistakes Sam WILL make, and that one line from 9x13 proves that just because Sam doesn’t make the mistakes this season, doesn’t mean it wasn’t already on him before this episode to lead the next lap of the endless circles of the codependency stuff. 

* * *

In the meantime, Sam and Dean impose on Ed and Harry. Dean sits next to Ed, Sam slots in next to Harry, which picks sides which again work for the most obvious parallel – Ed as Dean, Thinman as Gadreel, Harry as Sam.

* * *

> DEAN  
> All right, shut up and listen. This is how it’s gonna go. You two clowns are gonna get into that mystery machine outside

[Hehehehe](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/149520841244/gryffindorable713-i-get-the-feeling-i-wanna-be)

I still think Dean’s comment about Fred and Daphne is like, the biggest mistake he made in season 2 re: accidentally outing himself (minutes before “the most troubling question is…”) :P

* * *

Anyway that was totally not a segue into Dean’s biggest mistake in season 9 or anything:

> HARRY [lifting his shirt to reveal a gun in his waistband]  
> Say, “hola” to my little pistola. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Am I supposed to be impressed with that treasure trail or the lady gun you got hiding in your, uh, pants there? 
> 
> HARRY  
> Uh…Both?

Jesus Christ, Dean. Chill.

I don’t know why I bother, he’s gonna slap Harry on the ass in a few scenes :P

I think Dean realises what he’s saying about halfway through and just doesn’t bail out because there’s more honour in finishing the sentence than aborting on a “wtf am I saying” note (especially to the friggin Ghostfacers), and Harry starts it with a comment which is spectacularly unaware of how “little pistola” might be taken in a dick joke context, but Dean fucks up by noticing the happy trail and commenting on it instead of keeping his attention on mocking the gun (which should have been how he landed the comeback properly if he was gonna :P), which tbh by the time we get to Harry’s “uh, both?” may well as be a textbook example of angry flirting :P I am pretty sure Harry wins this round just by his total lack of self-awareness which is the Ghostfacer’s trademark, ploughing through Dean’s macho posturing/bizarre mating rituals and owning the snark Dean throws at him. Mostly because wtf is Dean even trying to achieve here. I think he knows it. His face…

What a mess.

Anyway Harry’s gun may be sort of little, but it has the pearl handle which parallels it to Dean’s gun and tbh I swear this moment got referenced by at least one joker on my dash after 11x23 about Lady Tony’s lady gun which looks like again like a smaller version of Dean’s…

So like, aside from any deeper you want to go with that, the fact he’s mocking Harry for this would be like him mocking someone for having a pink ipod at this point ;D

* * *

ANYWAY to try and get this remotely back on track, I’m kinda sad about Dean asking after the other Ghostfacers… I’m reminded of how he said he actually kind of enjoyed the show they put together, and he definitely seemed to like Maggie and the other dude (and presumably Corbett although he won’t mention him here for obvious reasons) more than Ed & Harry. He asks after the one whose name I’ve forgotten but at the time of re-watching I decided was definitely the “point of view” on the documentary, presumably the one they made do all the work editing it. I seem to remember he and Dean got on :P

* * *

You can see Ed’s uncertainty vs Harry’s over-enthusiasm from the start – that whole going to be caught out lying look that we’ve seen with Dean worrying about Sam discovering Gadreel in the start of the season as Harry cheerfully rushes headlong into investigating and Ed looks kind of sick.

It’s kind of fitting then that the next scene is Sam researching the book and trying to lend Thinman a shed of credulity while Dean is scoffing at it, since Harry and Sam at the start of the season are being paralleled.

* * *

Ooh this is the motel with the moose lamp for Sam, and the hunter with his axe and his ox that was paralleled to Dean in meta about Cain… I see this room also has 2 beds with the brown plaid blanket that ends up on Cas’s bed in 10x01 – not sure it’s the same bed frame but at least it’s a room with passing similarities. Cas’s room didn’t have the ridiculous divider or the mountain murals though. I actually have comments about all the saws on the walls in my drafts from treefrogie’s rewatch as well, which I wouldn’t have noticed/vaguely registered as part of the theme of loggers or woodsmen or whatever is going on here.

* * *

Dean picks a completely different table to research at from Sam – now they’re alone they’re no longer united in “ew ghostfacers” snark and bitchfaces at them… Sam’s giving their book a fair chance, and Dean is intentionally trying to research other lines of research to prove them and Sam wrong.

* * *

“the CLOSET” Ed announces, backing into it all dramatic like

* * *

One of the things about them is just that they’re examples of total man-children and despite apparently being on the road doing “ghost hunts” they’re very “still live in their mom’s basement” types, and their inability to sustain relationships is highlighted by Harry fretting over his ex and her new “complicated” relationship status… Their ghost hunting is very much a sort of cute hobby probably BECAUSE they’re not off the grid like Sam and Dean, but grown adults who work within the confines of society even if it’s in a really weird way e.g. their primary income is a series of websites and now a book about ghosts, and they are “fame whores” who can’t get past the dream of earning money making a ghost show on TV or whatever… Ed holding Harry back in this life and not wanting him to move on, or to become too invested in things outside of this such as a non-ghost hunting girlfriend who could tempt Harry to settle down, get a 9 to 5 job, and stop ghost hunting, is a sort of parallel to the way the Winchesters hold each other back e.g. 8x10 also by Jenny ends with Sam and Dean cutting out all their outside influences – Amelia AND Benny – who would tear them in different directions or establish a different “normal” for them and lead to an end of the natural order as they know it.

In this way the overall message of this episode when it comes to this sort of thing is, I think, fairly critical of the co-dependency, and it’s not just a “lying is bad” moral which makes Ed and Harry split up, but specifically the way that Ed tried clinging on to Harry and stopping him from spreading his wings and growing up.

* * *

(Spruce! That was his name!)

* * *

> ED  
> Oh, so, it’s about your ex eating her words? 
> 
> HARRY  
> It’s about making all the haters eat their words. Maggie and Spruce – the just – deserters. They want to lead a “normal life”. I mean, what is that? 
> 
> ED  
> Screw them.
> 
> HARRY  
> Screw them.

Ed manages to hype up Harry again for the time being, after all his regrets and fear on his face, when it comes to it he repeats the cycle where he could have called it all off – he was saying maybe they should just go a few moments before, but he changes his mind and Harry’s re-invigorated interest in finding Thinman despite Ed’s resignation (because it’s fake :P) pumps him up to try again instead. Harry also then in the bit I quoted recognises that the “normal life” is something they’ve rejected and they need to justify their ongoing rejection of it with results… Sort of like fame and glory in the place of saving people as the end reward for Sam and Dean’s hunting. In the start of season 8 Sam could imagine settling down and not saving people any more, and even in season 10 and 11 he’s still saying he’s mostly still doing it because Dean is when he thinks about the normal life or his retirement. They’re still stuck in the (rather more noble) version of their cycle, but of course their saving people might be the good moral justification but the damage they cause to each other, especially about continuing on with the job or dragging each other back to life or whatever is their own cycle.

* * *

It’s weird having actual scenes with Ed and Harry like this :P It’s hard to think of them as characters in part of the patchwork of the drama in earlier appearances; they’re sort of narrative defying fools or something, but here they’re very definitely being woven into the story with all their nonsense turned into complex characterisation. I know there’s not a lot of love for Jenny out there, but I think she does a pretty good job turning the Ghostfacers human in a way that brings them down to earth? While still maintaining their general personalities and awfulness :P

* * *

Thinking of that, yiiikes the conversation they’re caught in when the mom walks in on them when she’s bringing them lemonade. Again, re: the thing from the recap with Ed and all his “sex… with girls” and “gay love can pierce through the veil of death” arc, I kinda feel like he’s realised some stuff about himself – I mean tbh the season 1 line makes me pretty sure he’s been kinda bi all along, but he had an unrealised crush on Corbett he didn’t understand until it was too late, and now he’s having hella weird issues with letting Harry go, so I reckon it’s likely he’s sort of… I dunno, at the very least this is “I’d not mind having ladies AND dudes flinging themselves at me when we’re famous monster hunters” or at the far end, like, “dude… get with the picture already” to Harry… He definitely seems to be suffering from Apparently Straight Friend syndrome… :P

… framed with the closet.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Okay, well, that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, how could something be both real and fake at the same time?

Probably the key phrase in the “not touching this with a bargepole” discussion :P

It does also work well for the show’s whole subtext theme for season 9 aside from any grumpy commentary on fans and interpretation from that angle, aka we’re closing in on Metafiction (oh geeze it’s SOON) and of course Robbie opens up the whole show for discussion but as I’ve been picking out from the start of the season, stuff like this, or moments with very deliberate 2 or more readings are all over the place this season – I mean, like, from the start Sam with a second “subtextual” presence in him that he could only interpret scant clues about and never made the “reading” in time… Obviously “real and fake at the same time” is inaccurate Dean conclusions on this subject, which is  _important_  like nobody’s business by the time we get to 10x05 and what Dean says there, and what level everything is on, of all the many different writers and all the different consumers of fiction and where they meet in the middle…

In a way I think this may be one of those episodes written in the catchment area of a bigger thing (aka 9x18 visibly affects the season like a weight on the sheet sciencey people use to demonstrate gravity) but we’re not there yet. So like with how revisiting any chunk of a season before a big thematically important event, you find a run up of sorts, this version of the theme at first viewing vs after the end of the season, takes on a very different meaning. It’s one of the more overt episodes dealing with the idea of created narratives and interpretation and particularly fandom in a way that isn’t really revisited until 10x05 sets the record straight, so walking into it blind it just seems to pose a few questions and leave off, but by the end of the season we’ve seen how it all plays out, such as Robbie validating and encouraging meta reading, and then the incredible ballsy “in love… with humanity” etc 2 episode game, in a way, of the subtext.

(I said I wasn’t touching this but honestly I’m thinking about it so much I feel like I should write something down :P)

Anyway, Dean’s question is more like a riddle that we can use to actually try and answer to explain how it’s never entirely real and never entirely fake… Maybe this episode had a man behind the curtain, but the Internet will never know Thinman was a fake or even if they’re told not everyone will believe it, and if the end of the episode the story never leaves that warehouse, the murders leaked online so will fuel the story all the more as “real” Thinman murders, and run free without the creator who suggested it or the actors of it having any more say, so there is a positive take on it, criticism of the episode’s attitude aside.

(And again, 10x05 sets Dean up as grumpy about that one too, proving he’s not the voice of reason on these sort of things)

* * *

Does this count for “fresh fruit of doom”? There’s a whole load of pies behind the diner manager before he gets killed. Again, the argument this episode has the “threat” of normal life, aka the apple pie life, as Ed and Harry so loudly pointed out for us. Sam and Dean never ate here but Ed and Harry did, and Sam and Dean are much more sort of just passing through this episode as witnesses, plus that bit where Dean kills the guy, while Ed and Harry are the emotional drive of the episode.

* * *

Honestly, and I said I’d get to this when I got here so I can’t not, but

> HARRY  
> Oh, well, what are you gonna do. You gonna out me, “agent”?

I covered a fair amount of this back down in the Gadreel portion of this in 9x09 and 9x10 – he’s got the whole package that Dean has in a nutshell with Abner, and then Metatron saying he’s not going to “out” him about something unrelated to his sexuality, but blatantly, blatantly queer-coded language with a queer-coded character. Now Harry does the same to Dean, in a word, again as with “Uh… both?” throwing back on Dean the burden of this argument. If Dean “outs” him, Harry can “out” Dean because he sure as hell is less of an “agent” than Harry is a ghost hunter – like I said earlier in the closet conversation, Harry and Ed live on the grid, for whatever else you can say about their lives, Harry is presumably someone who can pass background checks and prove he’s legit just a dork with a camera who likes ghosts too much, and has wasted his adulthood chasing them. Meanwhile, here we get to the entire great story about Dean and his badge which anyone who’s been keeping up with the entire rewatch will know I’ve been obsessing about all the way through, but of course, the worst offenders of this are 4x05 & 6, 4x14, and then so far in Carver era, 8x11 brings it back up in a big way, 8x13 shortly after, and here we are a season later, and Harry is giving us the cheat code to all the rest, if the Siren episode or Aaron weren’t enough for you. Dean’s entire thing about constructed personas is contained in the crap about his badge…

(Honestly, I have all these episodes, plus of course 10x08 as the last major example I just haven’t reached yet, at my fingertips… why do I  _not_  have a gifset of all this? :P)

… and Harry calls him on it right here, with the strong association to the persona Dean’s made, how transparent it is, and how someone else who’s able to see through it (e.g. can read the friggin’ subtext, see also: Boltar in 8x11) can call him out on it. Dean glances over at where Sam is talking to the cop and of course it’s completely ambiguous if he’s more worried about getting chucked off the crime scene for being fake FBI or for Harry literally outing him to Sam.

(Hey, remember back in 9x06 where Dean came blundering into the Gas n Sip “outing” Cas as a former angel in his place of work? Because karma apparently remembers it here :P And so that’s the holy trinity of heavily queer coded characters getting “outed” this season)

* * *

And the word “tulpa” gets thrown around again, which is brought up again in 10x05 specifically to re-address fan investment leading to fan creations that take on a life of their own – more specifically, thoughts being given power and brought to life just by thinking them. These two episodes are almost like the opposite sides of a coin or something.

* * *

Holy shit the bi jukebox is back after 1000 years. Okay, I think it’s a different jukebox but it’s still bi which is the important thing. I don’t think it’s been around since season 4? Obvs red and blue are actually conflict colours, but you know… “how can something be real and fake at the same time?” – maybe when there are two complementary readings of it :P

* * *

> HARRY   
> First of all, hell no. And – and quit raining on my rainbow. 
> 
> ED  
> Rainbows can’t happen without rain.

I know I’ve been saying this is a super gay episode all the way here, but clearly it’s not *really* gay until rainbows.

* * *

It’s worth going back to what I said about Ed seeing Harry as his depressingly straight unrequited friend, but I mean, Harry is kinda more embroiled in all the CURRENT subtext than Ed (who I’m mostly basing this reading on him x Corbett to start with) what with all the constant sparring with Dean and saying shit like this – he seems much more on Dean’s level of probably kinda bi, but either repressed or not acknowledging that side of himself so much, and I sort of feel like Ed could have an unintentional sway on him too – either to convincing him to stay over and over, or even self-sabotage in Harry’s relationships where he may regret it and obsess over the girlfriends that got away, but their issue with the other Ghostfacers was that they abandoned them and went to live normally… I can’t imagine being in the Ghostfacers wasn’t a huge strain on Harry’s relationship with the ex this time, and probably part of why they broke up, as I was saying because Ed’s keeping them in a sort of weird adolescence between their childhood fantasy job, and “normal” i.e. adult lives. For him, perhaps, throwing himself into hunting Thinman or whatever else is his way of expressing the relationship with Ed in a way he can accept without thinking too hard and making it weird (aka, owning up to feelings) and I have now talked at multiple points here and just in general about Dean blurring hunting with dating, with Cas and then Crowley and then Cas some more.

* * *

Thinking of conflict colours, remember how back at the start of the rewatch when I had less to talk about so I pointed this stuff out a lot – we’ve got the return of obvious mustard and ketchup bottles at the diner, but here in Sam and Dean’s research session, salt and pepper shakers in front of them again, the black and white conflict colours which I guess go with morality stuff a lot too. Also just a reminder they’re meant to be fighting as Dean starts reminiscing about childhood memories.

And again, just because they’re working the case and Dean’s talking fondly, doesn’t mean they’re not currently in the middle of a fight, and this is blatantly reminding Sam of how they are brothers – and in a way how he can never really escape that, because memories of crap like this come connected to everything they do, if Dean can pull that one out at random off of this situation.

* * *

As someone who once watched all the available Marble Hornets videos a zillion years ago (eesh had I even left school yet at that point? How much of a relic ARE they? I think I saw someone say somewhere recently that Slenderman is like a decade old or more now) I super appreciate the crappy non-scary parking lot that Harry crosses dressed like a ninja and filming himself talking about being “deep” in the woods when you can still see and hear traffic going past

> HARRY  
> Harry here, solo Ghostfacer, investigating a possible Thinman habitat…in the woods. All alone, deep in the woods, a man could lose his marbles being so close to the glade of doom. Lucky for us, I’m really good at marbles.

_Marbles_

I have a weird appreciation for this episode which comes from a wasted youth and not being in fandom when it had freshly aired, so I missed all the criticism of it :P

* * *

> ED  
> All right, either you bleed Ghostfacers red or you don’t. If Spruce wanted to start a startup and Maggie’s heart was in the roller derby,

Oh right, Maggie is gay, which explains what happened with her and Harry’s ill-fated romance from 3x13. I forgot that :P

(Okay nothing says that, but while I have no idea if roller derby is even a thing here because I don’t think roller rinks are even much of a thing (there’s none near me), I’ve heard a fair amount about it connected to a lesbian subculture in America, and fairly sure I’ve seen this used as coding elsewhere :P)

* * *

> ED  
> But Harry – I-I couldn’t let him give in to his girl. I mean, she – she called the Ghostfacers stupid. Stupid! Can you – can you believe that? You know, I-I don’t care how much money her daddy’s hedge fund has. I just couldn’t watch Harry become a corporate stooge.

Yeeep

* * *

Oh Dean’s wearing his maroon shirt of doom here too – probably because I assume he does the rest of the episode in it and therefore kills a dude wearing it, but he’s also hearing about Ed’s Thinman gambit to keep Harry with him which of course parallels the Gadreel thing. (Sam instantly tells Ed that he HAS to tell Harry) And because of that, Dean sees this terrible example where it seemingly rips the Ghostfacers apart forever after they’ve been doing their thing at least as long as Sam and Dean have been hunting, basically.

* * *

> ED  
> You don’t get it. We were the Thinman guys. Without the Thinman, we’re just…guys –just – we’re just puffs.

Again, without context, that is, this from earlier:

> ED  
> Who cares? You broke up with her. Everything about that girl is complicated. Okay, I mean, she gets the cream puffs, she tells you to take out the filling. They’re just puffs.

Sam and Dean hear this and make a totally different reading off of the metaphor, which of course with an episode so filled with direct and obvious queer-coding and blatant lines which don’t really have any place else to go except for implying how queer everyone is, carries its own truth – “how can something be real and fake at the same time?” Like, sure they’re “wrong” about Ed’s intent behind that line but they’re sure not “wrong” about the wider meaning and their interpretation is still “right” in the bigger context…

* * *

> ED  
> If I tell Harry, he’s gonna leave the Ghostfacers.
> 
> SAM  
> Listen, if you don’t tell him, he’s gonna leave anyway. Trust me here. Secrets ruin relationships.

In case the parallel wasn’t anvil heavy enough for you :P

* * *

Harry’s camera battery, meanwhile, is running out ALARMINGLY quickly. It’s been down a bar every time we’ve seen it on screen. Not ominous at all :P

(it’s the little details, sometimes.)

* * *

> ED  
> If I hadn’t struck gold with Thinman, you’d be doing a boring job, doing boring numbers, answering to Dana’s dad. Okay? I saved you, bud.

Ed specifically says “saved” for more anvils. This of course is a fairly Dean-negative parallel just because of HOW selfish it casts Ed for the decision, while with Dean I think it comes from a terrible place for terrible end results, but plays off his hero complex/being Sam’s caretaker, and other such things which can be or are positive character traits in isolation/not taken to these extremes/not poisoned by the way he was raised and the toxicity of the co-dependency when he makes the decision. But this episode doesn’t do a good job of painting Dean in a good light, and in the end Ed takes the van and Harry catches a lift with the Winchesters, clearly picking sides on who should be more pitied, and given a final word; sympathy to the hurt party but no thoughts of redemption yet for the one who did the hurting.

* * *

ALSO okay one other thing about the stuff I said I didn’t feel like talking about (and believe me I’ve avoided mentioning like 20 other lines :P)

> ED  
> Look, Harry, we didn’t know from the start if Thinman was real or not. I – okay, look, maybe I had some inside knowledge, okay, but does it really make a difference if we keep it going for the fans? They’ll never know.

Obviously what I’ve been stepping around is if this is commentary on Destiel subtext, which again as I said, I’m dubious of this reading, since it’s totally still a thing in future episodes in season 9, excessively so as part of the themes of the end of the season up to the subtext-buried love reveal from Metatron. What I’ve only seen speculated very occasionally and without the accompanying rage to give it oomph since it’s coming from the sides of the fandom I’m inclined to follow, is the fact that this episode is entirely about (oodles of ship-free queer subtext aside) the Bro Bond or, of course, how toxic it is and how it will tear them apart if they carry on like this, and indeed how it already HAS torn them apart, seeing as before Ed came in to tell the Winchesters what he’d done, at the end of Dean’s reminiscing we get this:

> DEAN [laughing heartily]  
> Hm, good times.
> 
> SAM [suddenly sobers and we can see he is thinking about something else…]  
> Yeah, they were.

Which shows Sam, in the role of Harry, really really feels that same split Harry does with Ed as a result of Dean’s lies earlier in the season, and they’re specifically split up from “being brothers” in Sam’s words, whatever that means in practice, since 9x12.

The Thinman hoax was made specifically to MAINTAIN the bond that Ed wanted with Harry, paralleled directly to the Sacred Bro Bond, but it turned out to be toxic and hurtful and here they are, but Ed is saying maybe, despite all that, they can play it up for the fans, that is, the Thinman conspiracy, but keep working together despite everything, aka where Sam and Dean are with working together now, maintaining a façade of friendship for work purposes.

Essentially, this line is a very good way to keep this all in context with the anvil heavy message of the episode as it relates to the brothers, and wondering if instead this is criticism of the fans at least addressed to those who are failing to see change, or the need for Sam and Dean to address some of these issues… It’s still a very harsh message but it’s been one of the things Carver era has been addressing since the start – literally, 8x01, within minutes of Sam and Dean meeting again they’re in a co-dependency fuelled anger with each other, as Dean makes the first strike in a long series of back and forth actions and gestures. We’re into the plot accordion here, but this exploration carries on right through Carver era, attempts to put Sam and Dean on a path towards hopeful healing near the end, and yet 11x17 still ends up, 2 seasons later, having roughly the same purpose as this episode when it comes to an awareness campaign to the story they’re trying to tell…

And STILL people missed the point – in a way this episode has a much better delivery, just because Sam and Dean aren’t directly involved as the main players, and also because these are “once every 3-5 years” characters they can seemingly permanently split them up with no hope at the end of the episode to make a very final point about the dangers of this behaviour.

But yeah, the 2 readings thing is very true of Sam and Dean as well: how can it be real and fake that the co-dependency is toxic, and that they have this supposedly transcendent world-saving love? The answer is, which way are you looking at it?

And as in every episode since Sam said that line about not being brothers, they’ve still had fun on their cases, worked together perfectly well, and had some really good moments that connect them, whether it’s judging others together or Dean catching out Sam with funny things or fond memories, or Sam teasing Dean, so that you could almost forget they’re fallen out until the end of the episode when it ends on them sulking again. And outside of this argument, in other parts of Carver era, it’s still there but much more insidious if they’re not actively fighting; the story glorifying and condemning what hurts them in the same moment, and leaving a safe buffer between the fans of that and the story they try to tell about it needing to change, BECAUSE it hurts them like this. (I honestly wonder if they can get to a total resolution of this arc without some people ever realising it happened, tbh :P I have no idea if the parallel with Chuck and Amara in 11x23 went over any heads but it was a huge step)

so re: “pretending for the fans even though it was fake all along”, in proper context it’s very much about this bond, paralleled to Sam and Dean’s bond and this episode is as far as I can remember of the last part, and definitely everything I’ve watched so far, utterly Destiel free, though laden with generic queer subtext.

Which isn’t to say that it’s not still shitty to make fun of fans, because in the wider picture it still hurts to hear these lines mocking fans in the show (and 9x21 especially has no particular context but a source of writers who have the WORST record of understanding fans, bar Singer himself), and part of the minefield of this is that it’s horrible of me to try to defuse an analysis that it’s targeting our corner by saying it’s targeting another, but I feel like season 9 was the start of a very touchy time for Destiel meta fandom, and in my sphere I’ve seen this episode several times interpreted as  _specifically_  an attack on the Destiel meta as the most prominent subversive reading of the text, & I know this year wasn’t even done crapping on Destiel fandom with the JIB that year (which, again, I was so new to fandom I had NO idea what was going on so it was water off a duck’s back just out of being a noob :P) so this has been a fairly enduring idea… Which I also kind of believed or didn’t challenge in my thoughts, but now I’ve been through the episode again, I’m wondering if we shouldn’t be feeling more like it’s just general bad show > fan engagement, and specifically targeting those who would want to see Sam and Dean powering on through ignoring their problems, hunting monsters, and never growing as characters as implied by what Ed suggests he and Harry do…

… which is giving me some more thoughts about the actual content of this season 9 fight & onwards in the wider scheme too, as ignoring the problem and covering over it and pushing through is essentially how they make it to the end of the season, but there’s many moments like the reaction to the childhood story, or Sam storming off at the end of the previous episode, which make it all very hollow. I don’t think they ever really do more than bury and move on, even if for example demon!Dean gets to vent a bit at Sam, obviously their actions still stay much in the same pattern of creating more Thinmen and then pretending it never happened a few episodes later…

Eurgh. Like, I kind of get the point of the criticism from the writers but it’s still out of line just on principle you don’t mock the people who like your product, especially when you still also write in the subtext pandering to them that they like while you’re mocking them for it. :P

* * *

Anyway *pushes that all down and pretends it never happened* (I learn from the best)

Ed leaves Harry to stew, and bumps into Sam, who he can’t bring himself to tell how the conversation went, as he’s hurt like Dean is, by the reaction to his actions. Last episode I said Sam had a flicker of potential to reconcile with Dean at the end, and seeing that there’s 2 sides to it including personal conflict and regret and remorse about what they did from someone who ISN’T Dean just so he can see it on someone else’s face, probably is a thing Sam needed. As far as I recall the fight kind of sinks into the background after this episode until the end of the season – I don’t recall a BM scene at the end so maybe Harry  catching a lift with them at the end just bums them out so much it’s implied they’re in a better mood…

… also fairly sure next episode is Blade Runners, which as far as I can recall may just have the weird pacing issues of a Buckleming episode, and neglects the argument in favour of all the action, then Sam and Dean spend an episode apart except for occasional conversations by phone, and open and close conversations about the plot, then 9x18 they’ve buried the hatchet for 2 episodes now and have non-stop distractions, so it fades and fades until the end of the season.

Also this episode does so much heavy lifting of all those anvils, that it leaves the next writers in the clear not to bother with this so much :P

* * *

The episode continues to be spectacularly unsubtle

> HARRY  
> None of it was real, Sam. Ed was just pretending, and now he wants me to pretend, like this is just something I could get past. 
> 
> SAM  
> I know what you mean. Look, there are things you can forgive, and there are things you can’t. 
> 
> HARRY  
> So, which one is this? 
> 
> SAM  
> That’s something you got to figure out for yourself. 
> 
> [DEAN knocks and enters.]

This also with a “Dean walks in” moment completes a rule of three (at least that I’ve been paying attention to) of Dean busting in on the fight in 9x06 right as Cas is asked what he wants to live as and Dean walking in on Crowley and Cas in the deleted scene talking about what’s good being human. Of course it’s not connected to either of these arcs, but in a way it’s one for Cas’s emotional arc with Dean, one for Crowley’s, and one for Sam, who has to decide as well if he will forgive Dean or not, and this is the non-shippy, plain as day “He’s talking about Dean, duh” when Dean walks in the door right after Sam says that, because his lack of explanation of what he’s thinking about is hideously obvious that it’s to do with their fight.

Again, nodding ahead to 9x18 and Metatron asking us to read the subtext: if this season is the masterclass in telling us to read it and giving us teachable moments to explain how and what it’s for, this is a good collection of moments to explain the use of it, and how it can be applied, so it’s a real shame the 9x10 scene didn’t make the final cut. There’s other instances of Dean bursting through the door at a dramatic moment which I remember people collecting separately, but it’s definitely these 3 that add up together for something in my mind.

* * *

> ED  
> I don’t want to be a jellyfish spine anymore, Harry. 
> 
> HARRY  
> Jellyfish don’t have spines.
> 
> ED  
> Exactly.

I can’t believe they needed to explain Ghostfacer Speak to each other… they really are out of alignment.

* * *

Good old dingy industrial district… I swear that’s the same place used in 9x23 as the actual location off in the background. In my mind Vancouver just has an endless district of empty warehouses waiting for film crews. They probably have a protected status because the TV industry is such a source of revenue, tidying it up is actually counterproductive. :P

* * *

And we’re back to the storytelling theme, and what makes a story work, etc. The deputy is Metatron in this instance, and in a beautiful way that works with the other parallel, “Thinman” aka the diner kid in the costume is Gadreel, enacting his story by killing people for him. (Metatron also wants Cas to be his Thinman, but of course since he resists Metatron’s narrative, while at the moment Gadreel is happily going along with it, this makes more sense)

Anyway it involves the deputy setting the stage, including putting in his backdrop and playing with the lighting, all very much part of the way Metatron and his typewriter are at work on this season. They want to take control of the story, out of the hands of the original creators, aka Ed and Harry, which AGAIN makes 10x05 a ridiculous parallel to this episode just because of the subversion of its themes/attitude, as of course that makes the Deputy and the Thinman cosplayer Calliope and her scarecrow. And incidentally makes Ed “god” of the original narrative. Lol.

* * *

> DEPUTY NORWOOD  
> I didn’t kill anyone. Roger did. He’s the psycho. I’m the visionary. I don’t blame you for underestimating me. Everybody does.

See above, but also for the Metatron parallel, of course this is still in the part of the season where Abaddon is Dean’s main motivation as a big bad, and Metatron’s part is being kept mostly out of their thoughts – Cas is rightly concerned, from 9x14, but Sam and Dean are busy underestimating who the Big Bad is, and Metatron himself says that line about Dean coming for “nebbishy old me” and underestimating him, so this encounter is pretty much the entire end of the season from 9x18 onwards crammed into one go. :P

* * *

> SAM  
> So, what is this, then? Some sort of a twisted cosplay?

For the further adventures of messed up fan representation… these dudes remind me most of Demian and Barnes from 5x09, especially with the one short and round, one tall and lanky set up; Dean insinuates they met on a messed up online dating site and their story about how they met and found they had so much in common has a weirdly uncomfortable echo of the story the two cosplayers had in that episode – at least they owned to being losers and nerds in a relatively emotionally healthy way, and their fictional escapism was presented as positive for them.

It’s quite possible, wider commentary aside, that the reason this episode has such a poisoned fan narrative feeling is directly BECAUSE of Metatron polluting the story and writing his own shitty self-insert fan fiction, but you still have to account for the hurtful way this message comes across even if there was another aim. I remain sceptical of this episode however clever it is. >.>

* * *

> DEAN  
> You realize what you two jackasses are doing doesn’t make you Thinman. It makes you copycat killers. 
> 
> ROGER  
> It makes me Thinman. And you’re not telling anyone I’m not, 'cause you’ll be too dead to talk.

Anyway Metatron should probably be paying attention to comments like this. There’s also something very Metaton-y in the way he is determined to control the narrative – in this case killing everyone, but in 9x18’s case it’s leaving one alive to tell the story, which they were contemplating:

> DEPUTY NORWOOD  
> I’m a lover of the classics, Ed. And what we have here is a “Frankenstein” situation. I’m a lover I mean, wow, the creator. I mean, we – we were gonna let one of you guys live to tell our story but now, once you two are dead, there’ll be no proof that Thinman was your brainchild.

But instead of course it ends up being time to consume the creator and take control of the story for themselves, good old Death of the Author and all. (I don’t think these dweebs realise the level they’re working on with their literary parallel although that’s interesting all by itself, it’s almost too straightforward a comparison, while of course them not realising they’re literally paralleling several rounds of the great cosmic story of this universe is pretty amusing to me)

* * *

I know I’ve skipped past it already at this point but shout out to Dean’s descent-y stuff here, which has been talked about a lot although seemingly not on anything I’ve reblogged and tagged – his moment where the thinman dude is going to kill him and he doesn’t even react to the way he’s a fraction of a second from having his throat slit, or then the way he kills the guy in almost an embrace, just overpowering him and almost peacefully driving the knife into his stomach. It’s one of Dean’s more alarming MotW kills although many of them in this year and a half of Dean with the Mark are pretty scary, this is the first where he seems to be lacking humanity in the kill – the earlier ones before this were all just really badass, but this is Dean killing a human, and with that sort of calm but irresistible force that the Mark gives him.

Then of course Harry shoots the deputy and for them, as professional idiots who only meet monsters by chance and clearly not many if they’ve survived this long, AND operate “on the grid” and much more in society do DON’T kill things all the time, it’s a HUGE deal to kill someone, even a psychopath intent on killing them, and of course Harry does it to protect/save Ed, so it’s paralleled to the lengths the Winchesters would go to for each other on a much smaller scale where something like this is a really dark, horrible event in their lives. To be fair, there’s very few episodes where it’s “just” a human as the monster, and in many many cases it’s twisted around to make someone else or something else kill the human so that the Winchesters don’t have to. The show still has a line of sorts about vigilante justice against humans vs stuff that defies the laws of nature (i.e. is supernatural) so even if a guy gets ripped to shreds by ghosts he just lost control of, or another kills himself after seeing what has become of his vampire hunting Hogwarts scheme or whatever, the justice is being delivered in a very specific way. In this case, aside from the wider framework the Ghostfacers and Winchesters work in of knowing things that go bump in the night are real, it’s really just 6 humans go into the warehouse and 4 come out, and no magic, rituals, or anything take place here, except an exchange of power via attempts to control the story.

* * *

The Ghostfacers are really small, though. They only suddenly look it in the aftermath of the fight, framed next to Sam and Dean. Dean takes Harry’s gun and puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s a very soothing, gentle gesture and basically lost in the way the camera pans to have Sam and Dean exchanging a look over their heads. The detail of Dean being like “easy there you’re done killing” is horrifically ironic considering where he’s going, but it’s one of those many strange contradictions of Dean’s, to be kind of gentle about this – maybe just because he gets it and he knows that feeling so he’s soothing Harry from a place of experience. His fascination with the feeling after a kill is, of course, about to be centre stage next episode when he finally gets the First Blade in his hand.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Yeah. With the Thinman footage and the way I set the bodies, there should be enough breadcrumbs to make it look like those two psychos offed each other.

Dean ultimately takes control of the story

Because Dean never lets the story control him :’)

* * *

> HARRY  
> I came here with you to finish this thing with Thinman. I wasn’t just closing a chapter, Ed. It was the whole dang book.

Because anvils on the fact this is an episode about narrative stuff just in case you missed it :P

* * *

Also anvils on the bro parallel in case you missed it:

> HARRY  
> No. No. You did this for you.

“I don’t know why you can’t see it” Ed also says, re: doing everything for Harry, and again it’s the whole miscommunication thing, that each have their own idea of who the other is, and their own breaking points, personal limits, whatever, that can and will contradict the other’s needs. But in this case the parallel (and Sam and Dean are shown listening in) again has to mirror the worst case for the Winchesters, that they don’t ever find their way to forgive each other, so the “close the book”, end their relationship and their story, and don’t find a way to communicate between each other what their own narratives actually looked like. Of course the main problem in this fight, especially from 9x12 onwards, is the stances Sam and Dean hold that they just CAN’T explain to each other, whether because they don’t understand or because they don’t want to dig that deep. If there was open healthy communication they might have been able to work their way around this and actually explain WHY e.g. say Ed dropped a truth bomb on Harry that he was literally in love with him, at this point really just using it as an example although of course it’s implied in the text, but anyway, it would give Harry a way to reevaluate everything Ed did and make up his mind on it with a better understanding of his character. Between Sam and Dean, I think 9x07 serves the strongest example of what they, especially Dean, can’t say to each other – if Sam knew just the contents of the flashbacks, his understanding of the way Dean CAN’T find it in himself to let Sam go becomes way more understandable, and would lead Dean to an apology from a place of truth, Sam with a way to understand it, and when they were ready to reconcile, they could do it with a healthier understanding of why the hurt between them occurred, and how to deal with things in a way it doesn’t end up here in the future… you know, ideally. It feels almost uncomfortable discussing the Winchesters having a healthy conversation :P

* * *

Anyway Ed gets left with the iconic van and all on his own outside an industrial plant so I assume the next thing that happens is Crowley grabs him and takes him on a quest to meet Cain’s knock off double :P

* * *

*Harry monologues about sitting around on a porch with Ed, and Sam and Dean look miserable* Because we needed one more anvil heavy line to end the episode. At least, as far as I can recall, it leaves Sam and Dean working together somewhat better by the next episode.

I think this may be the one and only reference to retirement this season compared to season 8 having bajillions of references, and in this case it’s specifically to say that the retirement plans have fallen through.

* * *

This season is a long series of bummer moments.


	16. 9x16

or: apparently I’m still doing this

* * *

[note: this was started several months ago before I was completely consumed by exhaustion and distractions and put this on hold]

* * *

I’m mostly re-starting this because I’m bored and dizzy, but it has occurred to me that this would be the first episode where the MoL are presented more along the lines of what we eventually end up with for the BMoL in season 12 as 8x12 and 13 were pretty positive about their role and what the lifestyle upgrade meant for the Winchesters. Dean questioned it a little here:

> DEAN   
> Yeah. Yeah, I mean, don’t – don’t get me wrong. This stuff is awesome, and it looks like they ran a real tight outfit here, but I’m just saying, you know, don’t, uh, don’t think that they knew some big secrets that we don’t know.
> 
> SAM   
> Dean… they were a secret society.
> 
> DEAN   
> Which means that they made crap up and wore fezzes and sashes and swung around scimitars.

Which is indirectly pointing out how these things can be an old boys’ club rather than genuinely knowledgeable - he changed his tune within the episode, and there aren’t a great deal of MoL-y episodes after that… I think 9x04 was the only intervening episode directly about them? It criticised them through Dorothy (and Charlie making similar comments in 8x20) but even in that episode the old MoL dude was presented positively in the end, having continued to research how to save Dorothy. So Cuthbert Sinclair being an eminently beheadable villain type, even if he was ejected by the MoL, starts to show the way this power can turn bad - and notably the BMoL are more hands on like him, AND the American MoL are portrayed as stuffy and useless through their inaction because it’s a double-edged sword of a portrayal. Cuthbert temporarily earns some sympathy by playing off his fondness of Henry, and the point is made that Henry knew and used so much magic in a hands on way in 8x12 mostly because he knew this guy who was really into that sort of thing, so at least a balanced approach and sympathy to a Winchester would make you wonder about the merits of his approach or the system that rejected him…

Aaanyway getting ahead of myself because I haven’t actually started watching, but maybe this wasn’t the WORST place to stop and eventually have to re-start the rewatch from…

* * *

Oh also from the recap - complain all you like about Cas’s random between-episode disappearances but he was never banished to the bottom of the ocean for five episodes like Crowley :P No wonder he’s on vacation when we catch up to him.

* * *

Sam’s researching Cain and Abel via the first 3 hits of a Google search… Better read slowly - you have over a season more of reading that page

Meanwhile Dean in the background trying to get Crowley on the phone

What amuses me most about this is that normally this is super unsubtle Buckleming fare, spelling out the subtext for all to see willy nilly, but literally everyone is in on this and being about as subtle as the others – Sam rolling his eyes at Dean and asking why he cares happens at the very least also in a Berens and Robbie episode that I can remember and then next episode is the one where Crowley just propositions Dean every other line of dialogue and all, so they’re just going along with everyone else on this one.

This is also the first but not last answer phone message Dean keeps of Crowley’s – this one you could say is for blackmail or wtf purposes – maybe just to show Sam to get confirmation that even happened because seriously wtf Crowley… But the 2nd on the other end of this whole thing, in 11x06, is much more dubiously present on Dean’s phone – the option of nostalgia is totally on the table especially by 11x23 and Dean stocking Crowley’s drink in the Bunker. Anyway for now it’s merely “amusing” that Dean is keeping Crowley’s drunk-dials, as aside from the well-justified reasons for constantly trying to contact him (which also carry a subtext of what the Mark might be making Dean feel and want re: getting hold of the blade or killing Abaddon with it) - aside from the way Sam squints at Dean’s motivations a little, there’s not “much” here in the way of overt Drowley stuff in emotions and actions on Dean’s side. It’s way more just in the presentation that suggests it’s anything more than a one-sided crush from Crowley?

* * *

Also, importantly, “Not Moose” is the next thing on screen. Which had me thinking at the time that Crowley’s interest in Dean was just shifting over from an interest in Sam from season 8 as his attempts to be buddy buddy with “Moose” are way more iconic at this point and that one detail confirms it. 

I definitely feel up to the end of season 8, the casual viewer Crowley’s interest interpretation that I had and I’ve seen others with is that Sam, then Bobby, then Cas even had more interest and value to Crowley than Dean did. They talked to each other more easily all along and even did side missions together twice in season 5, but Crowley’s overt interest was played as teasing Sam and Bobby, followed by season 6 and him and Cas, and in all that, all the  _overt_  teasing misses Dean in a way despite everything. This rewatch with hindsight that Dean and Crowley will literally hook up in t-minus 7 episodes and counting makes it more and more clear to me that they’ve had a very different subtext the whole time with their banter, flirting and innuendo – from both sides. Crowley never pursues Dean until 9x11, but the chemistry was ready and waiting since, like, their second episode together. (Which if you’ve been following along the whole rewatch, you’ve seen me groan literally every time I have a hindsight moment come up and punch me :P)

Anyway, the “Not Moose” moment underlines that Crowley himself hasn’t been that overtly interested in Dean until recently, and we know his attention has been most recently on Kevin in season 8/the start of 9, but often also with teasing Sam more – they interacted far more often in the Bunker while Crowley was captured there (especially 9x06 where Dean wasn’t even there), and in general they’ve been pitted together more on emotional stakes through season 8 leading up to Sacrifice, and Crowley even tries suggesting to Sam that they bonded after that… Sam’s having none of it so Crowley finally goes after what’s become a soft target in Dean.

In any case, joining up with Crowley here in this moment, he’s hooking up with some random demon and I feel like there’s a lot going on in this scene to imply rebounds – from “not moose” to Crowley hooking up with Lola because he’s not getting what he wants elsewhere (and we’ve already got the drunk dial to show that Dean is that thing but the writing of Crowley vs emotions is NOT SUBTLE this episode).

(I do wonder if his complete and utter breakdown this episode was a step too far, and that THIS should have been handled way more subtly, because while he was sort of due this moment in the story, the later episodes including NEXT episode play it as much more ambiguous that Crowley was ever this compromised and I joined fandom in time to see a lot of meta speculating if Crowley was putting the whole thing on. 

He bounces back quickly, maybe not in being attached to Dean as this DOES sow the seeds of season 10 and Crowley’s failings there because he’s compromised by his feelings for Dean, but definitely in the way this whole ‘addicted to human blood’ thing is just mentioned in passing again after this. And notably, this is I think the first instance where he doesn’t seem compelled to fight for Hell while distracted, which while that’s a later theme, as he loses interest in season 10, at this point he’s pretty much flipped too far over from the Crowley who came out fighting at the end of 9x10 against Abaddon, and seemed made of pure motivation in 9x11, an episode where he sneakily mis-represented himself and showed a lot of fake weakness (e.g. putting on a huge show of being scared of Cain) to manipulate Dean. 

Like with many other Buckleming episodes I’ve encountered in this rewatch with hindsight I’ve never really brought to them before, it again seems like too much too soon, like they already know where this story should be going (e.g. season 10 Drowley, writing the scene where he’s moping on his throne looking at his photos with Dean) and then write it like it’s already happened practically. (See also: repeated jumping the gun with stuff like angel continuity in season 8)

This episode always stood out to me as being really weird even before I knew who wrote it, and the way Crowley’s arc wavers wildly around is almost entirely down to Buckleming vs other writers being more subtle >.>

* * *

I’m not sure how I’d pace the opening but probably not this… Weirdly placed title card is weird. Maybe start in media res with Cuthbert even just hanging out admiring his blade moments before he’s interrupted by main characters piling in his door, then zoom back to explain how they got there so we have that waiting for us. Being concerned about Crowley being betrayed isn’t a huge hook and his addiction wasn’t even foreshadowed so much as literally just shown in 9x06 so it’s no plot twist, and Sam and Dean are not really part of the story yet despite a token start point with them – since they’re just trying to get hold of Crowley without even having a good reason to do it (other incentive: they actually found something, and that’s why they’re trying to contact him) we don’t really have any reason to go back to them any time soon, and considering we’re trying to get to the first blade, there’s a LOT of faffing in the opening of the episode where the actual goal is lost in smaller pointless subgoals like finding Crowley or all the little steps they go through to get to the Blade’s last known location…

* * *

There’s not much else going on though :P Lola undermines herself by saying she will only report to Abaddon but then reports to this guy so there’s like, no reason he’d let her see Abaddon next time if she survived because he knows he can get a report from her. A+ strong female character

* * *

Thinking of that, we have the Snooki cameo and I guess the only reason we have this is to have it, and to pad the episode because you know who else they could summon if they really wanted to get hold of him?  _Crowley_.

* * *

I still don’t know why this happened on a meta level either :P Maybe she had a good sense of humour about them making fun of her in a previous season and came to set the score straight

* * *

My only other contact with Snooki in anything ever was seeing her on that American version of the dancing contest reality show thingy when I was over there last and I thought she managed to pull it off with a reasonable amount of dignity considering what her rumoured reputation was… between these two things I’m vaguely proud of her in a way.

* * *

Crowley has a brief meltdown about the mess he’s gotten himself into, kills Lola, has a moment that reminds the kids that drugs are bad, etc.

There’s probably some good stuff about Crowley vs how much he really wants Hell here. He’s pulled back onto his normal path fairly quickly by the betrayal and the reminder of how much there is to fight for, and Lola seems to have played a part in dragging him under so it’s possible Abaddon sent her to ruin things, although that seems way too subtle for her. Possibly just sent Lola to spy and Lola took some initiative on that if Crowley stumbled just a little, taking a break from his search to get a fix where she’d find out about it… I just don’t know if Abaddon is the one to have a clever manoeuvre like that :P I love her but she’s not very delicate about destroying her enemies.

Anyway Crowley still has stuff to fight for and wants to – within a few episodes by season 10 he really doesn’t seem that interested in holding onto Hell any more after winning it back, and really it’s not until Lucifer is free again and challenging him for it (and winning) that Crowley has any serious motivation to want Hell. I suspect season 12 is going to be good for him in a weird way like if you care about his arc, his interest in Hell takes a strong hit here, and is toppled in 10x01 once he gets everything he ever wanted and finds out everything still sucks; season 11 he was completely flattened by Lucifer, but now he’s going to fight back. Finally. :P

* * *

Meanwhile: Sam googles what the Mariana Trench is to kill time, because that’ll totally tell him what Crowley was doing there. (They KNOW what he was doing there)

* * *

This on the other hand was more subtle:

> SAM  
> Okay. Assuming he does show up with it, Crowley is only useful to us until we have the Blade.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah. So? 
> 
> SAM  
> So…There’s nothing stopping us from using it on him, right? 
> 
> DEAN  
> Nothing at all.

Dean hesitates just a moment before he says that – maybe not thinking of what would stop him, but possibly realising that that literally hadn’t occurred to him – that he hadn’t actually had any plan to double-cross Crowley in turn and stab him and that they were all working on trust.

Sam, meanwhile, has a beautiful history of always being up for killing Crowley and trying if you give him half a chance, so he’s probably been thinking his own thoughts about this :P Again, the thing from 9x02 where Dean says he didn’t kill Crowley because he thought Sam would be smart about it and want to keep him for questioning and Sam’s like lol no I would stab him

* * *

Between calling for help and them showing up, Crowley’s showered and dressed back in his usual gear which also makes him look more business as normal. You could say it’s because he’s ventured out of the hotel room in search of more blood but visually it immediately starts making him look on the path to recovery without their help. I mean, they could have sent him out in trakkies or something :P

* * *

Again, Sam and Dean have a different approach to Crowley:

> DEAN  
> Look at you. You’re a mess. You know, we were counting on you. You let us down. 
> 
> SAM  
> Your slimy followers were counting on you to kill Abaddon, and you let them down.

… it’s more of the Bucklemming funny brothers in sync interrogation as well here, which they do again in 9x21 and a few other times (actually I think in 11x21 they ganged up on the poor silly prophet guy a bit like this a few times) … these scenes seem fun to film but especially right here, I’m not sure about the levity of the moment for Sam and Dean… Also I took a month or two off of this rewatch but I think I was looking ahead at this episode as where their season 9 feuding gets put on ice in that way where there’s already too much going on to shoehorn in the fight of the season as well, but even with other episodes showing them working on muscle memory working together and even having brief moments of fun, this strikes me as them being a bit too close too quickly while they’re still technically upset with each other over season 9 drama…

* * *

[suddenly it is December… “month or two off” pfft Lizzy]

* * *

I’m reflecting on if “you don’t know what it’s like to be human” broke my will to keep meta-ing this show or not :P

Blah blah, perception differences etc… I think Crowley is probably trying to say, you don’t know what it’s like to SUDDENLY be feeling human things after hundreds of years demonically cut off from emotions. To go with the storytelling theme, Sam and Dean are an unreceptive audience who aren’t willing to make the empathy leap to what Crowley’s getting at here (and since this moment is set up to objectively ridicule him, we sort of aren’t either). Crowley’s shit is all really important and overwhelming in the world of Crowley, and this episode opens with a long insight on what that is right now, but ultimately doesn’t get us properly into his head (by using him as an object of ridicule).

I’ll just parallel it to what I said about 9x03 and Buckleming fudging up the sympathy on Cas’s experiences as a human. Partly because I said they just don’t go deep enough and get at the core of what really matters here and what’s affected and changed Crowley (the Drowley arc stuff would be a great start :P), and partly because of my bemusement about if they knew what the human experience even was. I think in more skilled hands, the Cas and Crowley arcs would have been directly linked here in many ways, but there doesn’t seem to be much reference to the fact the same writers wrote the other episode this season dealing with the exact character parallel to this moment in Cas.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> And the First Blade was not, as hoped, in the Trench. It had, in fact, been scooped up by an unmanned sub, from whom it was stolen by a research assistant, who reportedly sold it to Portuguese smugglers who, in turn, lost it to Moroccan pirates in a poker game.
> 
> SAM [confused]  
> What?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Poor moose. It’s always a little tricky keeping up, isn’t it?

writers aside, I’m tempted to file this under things where delivery got lost somewhere between intent and acting - Sam’s “What?” could be anything sarcastic about the point of Crowley telling him all this to no end or laughing at the ridiculousness of this story than just plain confused, as there’s nothing inherently confusing about this. Unless of course this is something where whichever of Buckleming wrote this line feels THEY personally would struggle to keep up with a complicated and unhelpful but linear narrative… >.> Anyway, doesn’t look good for Sam.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> I’m still a little tainted by humanity. Makes me sentimental.
> 
> SAM  
> Well, stop.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> You and I both know we shared a mo back in that church. And on some level, we are bonded.

See also: “not moose”

This is again a pretty silly moment with weird character stuff going on, but for all that, it does serve as a good distinction for Sam vs Crowley and the Dean x Crowley stuff, showing the obvious way in which Sam reviles Crowley and won’t give him an inch emotionally because he’s never allowed Crowley in, doesn’t intend to start, and doesn’t feel like any of the many times they’ve worked together in the past have done anything to make Crowley deserve an in. Dean on the other hand, like it or not, somehow does consistently have a soft spot for Crowley almost from the start. 

The “we are bonded” is, I think, a direct Amara line as well, which makes me laugh all the more about this. There’s something to be said about the power of “??? no we’re not” as a rejection of interest from an unwanted source, vs Dean’s problems with his emotional vulnerability specifically for the sort of fascination or self-destructive feeling that drags him into stuff like that or with Crowley.

(And of course Crowley using “bonded” calls back to Destiel, and Sam rejecting this idea is like, lol, no dear god no this is not what’s happening between us)

* * *

There’s been a fair amount of meta about Crowley stealing candy, paralleled to Cas in  9x01 and Dean in 8x01 with the machines representing humanity and choice (as well as basic human needs). A good thing comparing Crowley’s arc to Cas’s, if the silly and somewhat subverted example to prove the rule elsewhere. (As I said it’s dubious how much Crowley is affecting some/all of his turmoil and this would be a good metaphor for him scrabbling around dishonestly for the same experience, but not needing it in the same way it was so urgent or emotionally telling in the other examples)

I can’t remember if I’ve seen much about Sam and Dean sitting on different parts of the bench, except that Sam has a “high ground” as it were, and the bench itself has an arm in the middle that would separate them even if they sat on it together. Sam and Dean continue to be divided (and later in the episode Sam’s going to be divided from Dean again)

Also I remember a lot of discussion about Dean comparing Cas and Crowley as humans, saying Cas was an okay guy. There’s a very clear distinction being made that personality seems to come from humanity, which doesn’t strictly seems to line up to the more nuanced way it comes across most other places in the show, especially in the better written explorations around stuff like soulless!Sam or demon!Dean.

* * *

Again, Dean eventually calls Crowley out about the candy by telling him,

> [DEAN gets up and shouts at CROWLEY]  
> Hey. Hey! Cut it out, man! Image! You’re the king of rotten. Act like it.

see also: slimy followers - Dean again thinking almost like on the behalf of Hell, again one of those vaguely concerning little things before he becomes a demon :P

* * *

Crowley briefly possesses the guy they arranged to meet for info when the conversation isn’t going their way - tiny moment mirroring a lot of bad stuff from recently like Dean giving permission for Crowley to possess Sam to kick Gadreel out - amusingly we get a reaction shot from Sam of having to figure out how to talk to the guy like nothing happened on the other side of a brief possession… For some reason Dean looks all too weary of it…

* * *

Oh yeah, that bit where Buckleming realises they haven’t killed any PoC so far and have 2 guards shoot each other after the blade is not-stolen. I think they actually managed a fairly non-murdery run so far this season, until these guys. I guess they were distracted being awful in other areas :P

* * *

… Also after all this in the opening half of the episode it really seems like Abaddon is a threat and this episode is going to have a whole lot of drama to do with her since the opening was all about her getting on Crowley’s case and the second quarter of the episode is a race against her to get the blade… (It seems to be the same set up as 9x11 where her minions DID catch up to them) Aaand as far as I recall after the 20 minute mark her side of the story is nothing aside from vandalising the car off-screen? 

I’d probably have trimmed the hell out of this opening for time (as far as I recall the Cuthbert stuff is actually fairly good watching), and then thrown in an actual confrontation where she sees they have the blade, then Crowley only screws them over and takes it after Dean’s dispatched a few minions and Abaddon legs it and they think they’ve won. 

Also gives her a very good reason to steer clear of them for the rest of the season. 

* * *

Since, you know, she does anyway.

* * *

What always bothers me in the next exchange (with the professor from the museum who hits on Dean - one of the first metas I remember reading was about how uncomfortable he felt about that and how it was a mix of performing Dean in front of Sam, and totally not being his “expected” playboy self in his actual personal reaction) is that they’re all talking about the First Blade as the First Blade. Now I can expect some people who are experts to know what it is if they dabble in magic and history (e.g. Cuthbert) but everyone else… nu-uh. Essentially they don’t give us any suggestion the woman from the museum is anything other than a muggle (rather than say, someone like Bela who deliberately seeks out and trades magical artefacts) 

> DR. MCELROY  
> All right, look, I did acquire the so-called First Blade. And carbon dating did peg it to biblical times, but the authentication proved unreliable.
> 
> […]
> 
>   
> DR. MCELROY  
> Several weeks ago, a confidential offer was made to purchase it. I was afraid we would never authenticate the thing, so –

it sounds like they really were trying to science it and MAYBE someone told them what it was or they were just trying to work out how valuable it was (the previous guy shopping it around may have alerted some people in the know so others like Cuthbert would be homing in on it long before Abaddon knew - Crowley would have caught this lead if he hadn’t got bored of looking or whatever happened)

actually TBH the other thing that really bugs me is that it’s all freshly happening right now right when it’s needed. Now, the deep sea retrieval may have been an accident and a while back if all the stuff with pirates and smugglers took several months/years of being passed around, but it’s suddenly in America and only recently passing through people’s hands in the last WEEKS after what, over a century in the ocean? 

I have 2 suggestions: 

One, “the ring wants to be found” aka like it “betrayed” gollum and slipped away to ensnare a new owner in Bilbo, the blade/the vague Darkness-related power lurking inside it manipulated events in order to be found, and had been happily allowing itself to be passed around to those who would get it closer and closer to Dean now that it was time. 

Two, the simpler “Dean is the centre of the universe” theory, by which the narrative bends to his needs at a cosmic level. Narratively, it was time for him to get the blade, and so it would get to him. And Crowley just finding it and bringing it back COULD have got the job done, so there was no doubt he would get it, but that isn’t a good story, and so the universe twists around to create a challenge and warning for Dean

(much like those barking dogs trying to warn Cas in 8x22 - they are of course in this version of the story, part of the whole “the real reason dogs were put on this earth…” conspiracy that Dean’s intimately connected with because of course that is a part of the “Dean is the centre of the earth” crazy web of ideas :P Listen, sometimes you just have silly ideas about the show you nurse as pointless little headcanons while you’re a casual viewer, and then you end up neck deep in meta and suddenly you have the resources to go REALLY weird on something like this…)

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Let me get this straight. You keep me locked up in this closet

filed under: pfft @ the word choices there :P

Again, heavy handed but I’m quite fond of the imagery of Crowley demanding an upgrade from being locked in the dungeon to sitting around in the library with a drink (also some of Dean’s vintage porn, which I’m less fond of but ho hum)… 

This thread is fairly complex, starting with the end of Crowley the monster in the basement as he was at the start of the season, as a very dark, personal threat in a sort of internal way (which is how he is used this season, getting to Dean in such a way to turn him into a demon)… 

As I was saying back in 9x04, Dean is TERRIFIED of Crowley one on one especially with having him in their power but obviously precariously since if he wanted to escape he would be VERY dangerous - he starts working with them, Dean is beyond caring about personal safety in 9x11 and it’s almost normal for later Crowley episodes… He earns an understanding of working with them and not meaning to hurt them. 

But he’s back to being handcuffed here, originally for his own good, but Sam and Dean are working together on this and so it averages out with Sam’s lack of trust (it’s probably not a coincidence with the “not moose” stuff that Sam’s had more one-on-one interaction with Crowley this episode so far when it comes to “managing” him while Dean (complaining about Crowley’s slimy followers and his image) is relating to him directly) 

… Anyway, Crowley being moved from the basement, the sort of dark secret place where family secrets go etc and dark threats can lurk, to chilling in their library, is a social upgrade for Crowley, and he’s been moved into their “home” coded area. He’s still handcuffed - still represents a threat (I mean, he DOES turn Dean into a demon, in the supposed sanctuary of his own room) so I guess it’s like they’re letting the threat in, giving him the inch he needs etc. 

The other threads are ones which are all through Carver era & beyond into that blurry Dabb era wrap up zone at the end of 11 (see also on that note: all the stuff I was saying about Kevin in 9x14). Those magazines are the ones Dean found in 8x17, and the whole sharing porn deal has circumstantial similarity to God finding Dean’s porn. I mean it seems this was part of Crowley’s demands so it was no accident, but it’s very similar of this ~higher power~ making themselves at home, especially by blurring themselves with Dean. 

Another of the first metas I remember reading (and I am so sorry I never reblogged season 9 meta, nor have any memory of where I read it, as it was mostly facelessly on the tumblr app - I remember following an amazing thread of meta post after meta post, only to discover because of the app sucking so much, I had no idea who or where or, after I accidentally navigated away, how to get back even that same day >.>) was a discussion of Crowley deliberately mimicking Dean’s behaviour here, and it’s only coming back here for the first time in years that I remember it - and I don’t think anyone else called back to this after 11x21. But God did unsettle us all by doing this, and now I recall how this moment was used to show a similar unsettling - Crowley is posturing again by doing this and in a small way asserting more control over Dean. Since we know that’s his endgame by this point and that he WINS I think it’s fair to say this is what he was doing >.>

& of course the final thread is that he’s sampling their drinks in their Bunker, and 11x23 had such a sneaky number of layers about that, showing us not just how well-stocked the Bunker was as an explanation that Dean’s beer run with Cas was totally manufactured, but that on the other side of things, he seemed to keep the library stocked with Crowley’s favourite brand. Crowley seems fully invited into the home space by that point, even if no one will admit to liking him, it’s definitely a conclusion of sorts to what starts here, even if Crowley really does have very few opportunities to hang out at the Bunker. (Does he even come here between season 9 & 11?)

> CROWLEY  
> It’s not a very good scotch, is it?

* * *

I was just minding my own business and @justanotheridijiton dropped me a link to inform me you can watch this episode on Serge Ladouceur’s website in full, if you don’t mind a recording that sounds like it was made in a bathtub

[http://sergeladouceur.com/clips/supernatural/directing/](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fsergeladouceur.com%2Fclips%2Fsupernatural%2Fdirecting%2F&t=ZjUwMTVhOTY2MGVhNGExY2YyOGY5M2JhNjRiZTczNGYxMTM0OGEwOCx3bE5DazE0bA%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F153917040153%2F9x16-rewatch-or-apparently-im-still-doing&m=1)

this is probably not legal but it is very funny that it exists at all

* * *

Anyway Crowley goes back to calling them stupid and the writing doesn’t help make them look very bright. >.>

* * *

Oh, Cuthbert created the warding on the Bunker, which means Amara undid his hard work. Shame they beheaded him - we actually got to meet the guy who could have fixed it for us :P

* * *

We’re running out of time so suddenly no more treasure hunt:

> CROWLEY  
> I never knew his name, but I heard someone was out. Did my damndest to find him. Thought he might be my way inside this joint.
> 
> SAM  
> So where’d you look?
> 
> [Scene changes to the Winchesters and CROWLEY walking through a forest of tree and into a clearing.]
> 
> DEAN  
> So this is where your demons tracked him to?

It’s a throwaway line that Crowley had looked for the Bunker too to explain this, and it’s not surprising given what was known about it. As I was saying in 8x12, the MoL were disruptively interesting enough to bring down this sort of attention on themselves… In 9x11 I was talking about Crowley hoarding and arming up (including stuff like getting hold of the Colt before there was any reasonable urgent need of it - but uncertainty about where the last knight of hell disappeared to is a hell of a motivator to get a kill anything gun, never mind how he also previously searched for this weapon knowing it was capable of killing her :P) Anyway, giving him some retconned interest in the Bunker as an excuse for already knowing where Magnus is gives us another loose end about Crowley’s past activities searching for weapons/resources before we ever met him in canon (presumably - he likewise seemed to have followed whatever lead stirred up interest in the First Blade way back when John and Tera were searching for it)…

* * *

> SAM  
> We know what happened back in the day. We don’t necessarily agree with it. We figured…Maybe you want to tell your side of the story.

Hey look, guess what theme. This is interesting as a sort of manipulative call to get access to someone by asking for their story - in most cases so far the villain has been the one constructing the story (in a mirror of Metatron controlling the overall story) so while Sam seems to be asking nicely, it’s very much playing into the ego trip Cuthbert might get to tell his story and flattering him that his side is important and that what is written about him may be a lie or not trusted. Offering him the illusion of control over his story when really they’re just going to try and get that knife off of him. It’s very clever manipulation by Sam.

* * *

And in turn his house is all staged stuff like throwing monsters at them to see how they react - manufactured drama that he applauds afterwards like it was a show.

(Dean, being Mark!Dean, is ruthlessly efficient at killing his vampire… Sam less so. If Cuthbert is picking favourites, he’d favour Dean before he even finds out why they’re here or that he has the Mark)

* * *

Cuthbert’s room is so ridiculous. He has a unicorn skull. I think there’s some repurposed art from the Beautiful Room? (Not in strong focus) We know he has the throne the Alpha Vampire used that later shows up as Crowley’s throne - whether it’s the same one in-world or not is fairly amusing to speculate on, especially as the Alpha Vamp failed on his “see you next season” promise, and it seems moderately to extremely likely Crowley came back and ransacked this place once he knew how to get in. 

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, you’re looking good for a guy pushing…90?
> 
> MAGNUS  
> Well, thanks, sport.

I do wonder how intentionally gay all these things I point out and laugh at are meant to be :P 

There’s been a lot written about their charged interaction when it comes to the latter part of the episode, and the control Cuthbert was exerting over Dean and his coded interest in collecting him. Honestly with hindsight can we just write him down as a Crowley parallel for the blatant coded sexual interest because this is exactly what Crowley does with Dean in a way - or WANTS to before he loses control of him anyway. 

* * *

> MAGNUS  
> Things never change, do they? I kept telling the boys over and over again – I would say, “we could stop all this. We could rid the world of monsters once and for all if we just put our minds to it”, but, “oh, no,” they said. “No, no, no. It’s not our place. We’re here to study. We’re here to catalog”“

“rid the world of monsters” isn’t subtle at all as a parallel to Sam and Dean still feeling bad about not closing the gates of Hell. (In 9x02 they thought the slow way of getting the names of ALL the demons from Crowley to send them back/kill them one by one was an appropriate alternative, which they quickly gave up on :P) Anyway Cuthbert’s practical interest in applying their skills for the greater good is ominously tempting. 

I do wonder if the real “big picture” force for good or bad is just the natural order. Dean being placed outside of it since 1x12 does, in a certain kind of tropey way, make him indebted to it but also immune - this ties into my Dean and Death [the character] fascination which ALSO circles back around to “Dean is the centre of the universe” and is going strong with Billie’s issues with Dean (and Winchesters in general) for defying the natural order, as Death and Billie are the best representatives of it we have and are answering to those mysterious “rules” that only they know about truly. In any case, Cuthbert wants to do the same kind of thing that caused so much trouble NOT to do at the end of season 8, and was exiled for it, and then as if to put a nail in the coffin of it ever happening, the MoL were duly put completely out of action.

And not for nothing, I’m bringing this all up because in season 12 the BMoL have an eradicate all monsters policy in their country (that is, a bizarre AU of MY country :P), and we started the season discussing in great detail how this is overkill, and essentially how what seems like an objectively good thing (no monsters, yay!) is totalitarian and unenforcable and too black and white for the world they live in. I don’t know what the Winchesters could do about the BMoL on their home turf, but in America, they can defend that natural order that the formula of the show keeps locked in place. As I said, Cuthbert offers a much more interesting insight into the BMoL characterisation for season 12 than any of the previous examples, and considering I started this post in the summer and it’s now December, I have at least a little hindsight on how things have been set up this season now than I did at the beginning of this post :P

* * *

Anyway then surprise surprise Cuthbert was all talk and didn’t want to help them after all. His “side” of the story wasn’t accurate but also a manipulation - seeing what they were about even after they pass his first test - and he kicks Sam out to keep Dean for himself.

* * *

Since I was paralleling Cuthbert to Crowley stealing Dean, it’s doubly ironic Sam comes stumbling out of the woods and asks Crowley for help to get Dean back

Crowley just permanently symbolic of bad choices people are making just by being in the same room as them

* * *

(Cas’s season 12 adventure is pretty much on a knife edge of can he out-eyeroll the bad parts of working with Crowley or will Crowley get to him again as well - for what it’s worth I have faith in Cas’s eye-rolling:P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Yeah, well, problem is, it’s attached.

pls remember a year and a half of fandom wondering if Dean’s arm could be chopped off to save him from this or if it would regrow with the Mark attached

* * *

> MAGNUS  
> Dean, I am offering you the moon here

oh he’s gonna go howl at it, just not with you :P

* * *

He also offers to make Dean immortal which shows he’s done his research on the Mark :P Of course his ignorance of it aside, the fact the season 10 final run of episodes puts such an emphasis on Dean’s unwanted immortality is like the last ironic leg of the journey from this. Cuthbert offers they be companions forever, and in 10x22 Cas has his whole “I’d have to watch you murder the world” thing… Dean calls the first creepy, catching the homoerotic vibe there. The second, is a bit more like Cas’s love confession (which going by end of season reveals, pairs with 9x23 and the whole reveal for US from Metatron about Cas’s motivation, now letting Cas say it to Dean)

(If you want to rule of three it, throw in Crowley’s failed attempt to get Dean to agree to be his consort in Hell in 10x01, and you have a nice “creepy, creepy, tragic but not rejected for being creepy” pattern…)

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> If memory serves me, I’m the one who helped your brother find Cain so that we could find the Blade, so that Dean could receive the Mark. I’m the one who flushed that lout Gadreel out of your noggin. So, lately, big boy, I’ve seen more playing time than you.
> 
> SAM [exasperated]  
> Crowley, will you please shut the hell up?

I think that’s more Sam reacting strongly to the mention of Gadreel… While I was reading my notes over season 9 so far I noticed I mentioned several times how Sam objectively from the outside had very little to do this season, especially as all the crunch time stuff was Gadreel - even in the big fights in the early episodes Gadreel often showed up when Sam got himself nearly killed :P However obviously I’m not being mean to Sam about pointing this out like Crowley is - Sam’s constantly caught in a whirl of forces out of his control, and Crowley plays it like Sam himself has been able to do nothing, which understandably makes him angry to remember how little control he’s had. 

This also is a conversation which STARTS with Crowley once more trying to bond with Sam (maybe he’s trying to collect the whole set, maybe he’s just understandably nervous of what happens when he does the same as just happened here and takes Dean from Sam) but it sets up the dynamic for 10x01 of Crowley talking to Sam as if supplanting him, and taking Dean from him, which is how howling at the moon was played on the Sam vs Crowley side of things, even if it was an elopement on the Dean x Crowley side of things.

* * *

Also Crowley’s terrible sense of cause and effect there - is he editing the story or does he know Sam doesn’t follow linear yet multi-step narratives very well? This parallels the pirates and smugglers story, but in a way which then makes it clear that the intent was for Sam to be too stupid to follow it and Crowley getting the story backwards every step of the way including putting 9x10 AFTER 9x11 is obfuscating everything about how this story fits together. 

I suppose if nothing else, Crowley is directly paralleled to Metatron over season 8 and 9 with their attempts to control the story (even using the same-ish gambits in 8x22 and 9x18 involving manipulating the source material of the story, aka the Winchester Gospels, to their end) and Crowley has a long history of telling the facts in such a way that benefits him in a very edited narrative, again going all the way back to the start, but for him his victory of the season is based on how he can straight facedly tell Dean that he never lied in his victory speech at his “deathbed”.

What he gains here aside from winding Sam up though… He really wants to get back to Dean as much as Sam does because of his investment in the Mark of Cain gamble - Sam calling him useless does threaten his chance to oversee this all himself, like in 9x11 where he was totally in control of his manipulation and Dean only saw that in hindsight. Leaving them to it has too many variables he’s not in control of, even if I think if you asked him where Sam wouldn’t hear, Crowley would grudgingly admit he’s very competent. :P

* * *

> MAGNUS  
> Oh, come on, Dean. This is the object of your quest. Tell me Henry Winchester’s grandson isn’t curious to see if it works. Give me your hand.

I don’t know how much Dean holding the first blade for the first time was meta’d except under the “oh no this is bad” banner, but Magnus plays on a reference to Henry as if this is part of Dean’s “legacy” (he and Sam have been going around using that a lot since they found the Bunker - I suppose it’s about time something bad happened as a result of calling themselves that) and it fits the thread again from the set reuse for Cain’s house this time to 5x13 where Michael told Dean about the bloodline going back to Cain and Abel - it was never said which side of the family but it was implied John’s side, so in turn Henry would have been a vessel, and had this same, I guess… tendency… towards the blade? (It also makes the fact John was searching for it once a little worrying because he absolutely would have taken the Mark in order to kill Azazel, so it’s probably for the best they never got that far :P)

Also the, “object of your quest” thing is, like Crowley does, constructing a narrative around what Dean actually wants/what he’s getting out of all this - maybe to seal the idea of how much he SHOULD want it, but even at the time the need is badly outweighed by how ominous this all is, and it’s all so much worse than “just” collecting a useful new weapon. Of course then Cuthbert puts the blade in Dean’s hand for the first time, and he REALLY gets his first idea of how disproportionate this is and that’s without knowing about becoming a demon, or the Darkness, or whatever else. 

* * *

Anyway then Cuthbert completely saps Dean’s will which again has been paralleled so much to later stuff with the Mark and/or Amara just because of the symbolism of this whole first step of it all being linked to loss of will/control, sort of like, “this is what it’s all about for him” or something

* * *

A lot of things happen quite quickly (since we have like 3 minutes left of the episode :P) - Cuthbert grabs Sam as leverage to use against Dean, blah blah tried and tested formula, and then Crowley shows up and he and Dean exchange a look… Obviously associating Crowley in Dean’s mind with someone who’ll rescue him (and put him in a position to save Sam). More Crowley getting an in with him. We don’t see on screen if Crowley or Dean decides Dean should grab the First Blade to kill Cuthbert, but at the very least this chain of events also makes Crowley the one who truly enables Dean’s first kill with the Blade.

* * *

The next moment Dean and Crowley meet eyes again, but the following murder-y zone out Dean has isn’t directed at Crowley despite Sam and Dean’s discussion at the start about how they could just kill Crowley once they have what they need. Crowley is left watching with interest and not looking at all threatened or worried about this turn of events - it’s Sam who looks scared, and Sam who Dean is angled towards. There’s a moment right before he drops the Blade where it even looks like Sam might genuinely be in danger before Dean finally manages to let go. 

The whole “Cain murdered Abel” neon lights are flashing very loudly in the background, making you wonder just what the blade might compel Dean to do, and of course we know the Mark eventually leads us to demon!Dean chasing Sam around trying to kill him, followed by Cain’s stark warning that Dean will eventually do it.

With some more hindsight that the Mark wasn’t specifically crafted for him, but has a much longer history, I suppose this is Dean getting a raw hit of Darkness magic, and Amara’s fury was all directed at her brother - like getting a sudden moment of sharing a headspace with her, and having no way to know that and process it (just like Sam was being influenced by Gadreel’s feelings without knowing that was what was going on) and so her fury becomes for a moment Dean caught feeling compelled to kill Sam… 

* * *

It’s weird seeing Sam running around with the First Blade in hand :P 

> CROWLEY  
> Combine a little derring-do on my part, a little dumb muscle from squirrel, a little bleeding from moose…

more unheeded warnings about what Crowley wants from Dean long term (And the reason demon!Dean eventually ditched him :P)

* * *

I still don’t get why Abaddon’s demons wrote in enochian on the side of the car. I suspect Buckleming feel like it’s a generic language used by the supernatural beings everywhere in this world and have it mentally stored in some big generic world-building box for the lore instead of a few very specific boxes. It is possible Abaddon wrote it herself and is a very very old demon, but I also feel she’d have hung out beside the car and waited for them to come back instead, and the implication was it was her lackeys again…

Oh well, it looks cool. >.>

(poor Baby)

* * *

You probably shouldn’t have the conversation about how you mean to kill Crowley right in front of Crowley.

Dean didn’t even kill Crowley when he was in the murder rage, never mind now with a somewhat clearer head… I feel like he might have had a “he helped, can’t we call it quits if he promises to leave us alone?” speech if they hadn’t been interrupted. In a way Crowley stops *us* from getting the immediate verbal confirmation that Dean doesn’t want to kill him, but I think Crowley may have already decided that he’s “safe” around Dean.

Of course then Crowley makes the move to keep Dean on his hook by taking the Blade so that they’re far from done with each other. I mean he phrases it like he’s worried they’ll kill him and he’s keeping it for his own protection, but it’s obvious he has ulterior motives to do with stringing Dean along, since that’s what he does.

This situation has a few parallels - immediately, to 9x21 where Dean does manage to psychically grab the Blade off of the floor, bust out of the “thrown against the wall”  hold, and continue the fight. 

Also it’s the first time the Blade’s around and being used, and Crowley takes it for leverage, and the last time it’s in play the episode similarly ends with an ownership debate, where Crowley wants it back for leverage, and Dean gives it to Cas to go lose/drop in mount doom/swallow/whatever the hell he did with it, obviously giving that power to Cas, where it WON’T be used against him and Cas won’t try to control him… Essentially freeing himself from the hold the Blade has by giving it to someone he trusts completely who he knows would NEVER dream of manipulating him by having such a thing. The empty space of the First Blade not playing a role after 10x14 just quietly by omission shows Dean’s freedom from it/trust in Cas etc. I mean he maybe could have mentioned it again but I guess he just really did not want to think about it :P

* * *

The last words Crowley throws at them are about trust, and again directed at “Moose” which concludes Crowley’s attempt to bond with him from now until basically unless Crowley feels like chatting him up in tonight’s episode. Again, it’s a bit vague if that means Crowley wasn’t to be trusted all episode even when he seemed to be playing weak and affected by everything, or if he’s not lying about having a sudden last minute revelation now he’s got what he wanted… 

I suspect Crowley in season 9 would make a lot more sense if we didn’t have this episode to deal with :P

Also, honestly, it could have been the second half as the whole episode and then it would have been one of Buckleming’s best for miles around, you know, without the first half…

… the one I got stuck on for like 6 months or whatever but once I pushed past it I did the rest in a day

HEY let’s see if I can actually carry on the rewatch for real now!


	17. 9x17

or: I’m not going to lie, this episode is some sort of Dean/Crowley hell and I, an unsuspecting bystander, walked smack into it :P

ironically I wanted to keep this rewatch going to get to 9x18 because that’s my Destiel episode to end all Destiel episodes. I just… never really came back to this part of the show with all the hindsight of this friggin’ love triangle. It’s been YEARS since I re-watched season 9.

I mean I knew this was a Drowley heavy episode but

… 

* * *

Per my usual poking at what the recap is telling us: a fairly straightforward recap of Henry Winchester, and Abaddon vs Crowley, edited for what looks cool :P (Also to make her look intimidating and sell her as a viable threat for this season >.>)

When we get to the Mark, it’s Dean bitching at Crowley for playing him in 9x11, “you knew about the Mark” - and specifically, “you knew about Abaddon and Cain” set to Cain stabbing Colette in the stomach. It makes a focus on Cain x Colette again - or rather, blurring the Colette/Cain/Abaddon love chevron by telling us about Abaddon but showing us what was more important to the story between them: Colette’s death… 

As I was saying in posts about most of the immediate MotW after 9x11, the romantic parallels continue (this season is not a favourite of many, but it’s pretty solidly about romance and sex throughout with of course the accompanying Destiel subtext so I like the overall message in regards to this a LOT when you take in the season as a whole instead of individual episodes :P) and seemed to be mirroring various dynamics to Cain and Colette and/or Dean and Cas. I was actually most fond of Bess, Garth’s wife, who visually seemed like more of a Cas mirror, but played off this dynamic as the “Colette” to Garth’s Mark-paralleled werewolf problems (and though I still haven’t decided if I am definitely going to watch Bloodlines for this, ditto the werewolf girl in that - werewolves are consistently paralleled directly to Dean and the Mark before it was even a thing, with the whole “Robbie is actually psychic” 8x03/8x04 paralleling in 2 episodes whose subtext is waaay too uncanny for this season). 

Where we are right now here in canon, the whole Colette parallel isn’t as textual (just very suggestive) but I think 10x14 was pretty much demanding we retrospectively apply the meta we were writing all along. THIS episode for what Crowley thinks is happening, and for us putting together the picture in hindsight of the start of season 10 when THIS went textual, also really seriously establishes Dean x Crowley on the scene. Not that there hasn’t been tons of it already this season especially with 9x11 and 9x14, but in Dean’s version of the Colette parallel, Crowley is his Abaddon, the demon lover. It’s quite neat to have a reminder of Abaddon x Cain in the recap, even if this part of the story needs to get nearly an entire season worth of content more after it for the FULL hindsight.

There was also a lot of meta written about Dean x Crowley in the sense of Crowley trying to make himself the Colette instead as it was a place of control over Cain in some ways, at least in the sense she seemed to have the say over if he was killing or not and it was love that did it (and Cain did not want to kill her). From a twisted Crowley perspective this makes a lot of sense. 9x16′s dramatic conclusion had a very carefully staged moment of Crowley watching Dean get overcome with the Blade’s power but NOT trying to kill him and showing no interest in doing so. He then also hesitated to agree to kill Crowley when he was back in his right mind. Crowley’s already started the seduction, but for him this episode is making really really sure that when he plays with fire, he’s not going to get burned.

(He still was, but Dean never ever actually TRIED to kill him, and Crowley ended up heartbroken instead, which was arguably worse :P)

* * *

The cold open is almost exactly the cold open from the Siren episode, but with the wife beating the husband to death rather than vice versa in the original. Like that episode, Sam and Dean spend this episode apart, although the pay off of them trying to kill each other is only a thing here in canon because of the potential of the Mark (the recap does end with Dean’s murder fugue state looking at Sam from last episode), but I’ve written before about how season 9 as a whole follows the pattern of the Siren episode with Crowley as the Siren, leading them through the same path. This is essentially the bit where Nick and Dean hang out at the bar, but as a whole episode for them.

Also, the “main” Dean x Crowley arc sort of starts here… 9x11 carried more than enough potential and angry flirting, but this one I seem to remember is much clearer about the fact Crowley’s using seduction to get what he wants from Dean, now some more pieces of this story are obvious that we needed from 9x16 to really stop and take stock - this is a stop and take stock episode 

The main Dean x Crowley arc sort of ends in 10x17, in the sense that that’s the episode where Dean and Crowley reflect on where this all took them. Again it’s an episode which separates out Sam and Dean, and once again Dean spends it at a bar, some of which with Crowley so I’ve felt this arc is very neatly written and bookended and everything it needs to be.

(Obviously Dean x Crowley as a dynamic continues to be important as a thing in the make up of the show after that, since I was still analysing it in the latest episode :P but I would say 10x17 is definitely where Dean lets Crowley off the hook, and it’s an amiable break up - from that point on they’re more like exes whose relationship is truly in the past…)

* * *

Anyway Dean is cracking open the demonology books. Different approach from Sam and googling “mark of cain” over and over, although maybe sensible if you assume Abaddon won’t have a facebook

* * *

I think this point where Sam comes in and asks Dean if he’s slept and he replies “not a wink” is the point it’s probably obvious he’s not actually slept since he got the Mark and Sam is really not concerned enough despite being super concerned :P 

Since they were openly fighting until last episode, which crammed it all down but didn’t really have time for this sort of thing, this is the first time of what becomes the pattern up to the end of season 10 of Sam fussing about Dean’s behaviour and worrying about it in this specific way. Of course he’s totally right to be concerned, but in season 10 this arc gets much more self-reflective and character-driven, and this ends up feeding into the much wider arcs of Sam vs performing!Dean, which is still an ongoing thing, although Sam’s obviously been in a place of considerably more “Not going to get murdered if I mess up” security about it since the Mark was gone. (Which gets us relaxed family moments where Sam cheerfully outs Dean’s anime interest or whatever much much later on)… 

Sam beginning to fret about how much Dean is sleeping is the start of this though, as it’s the first tangible change that shows how Dean is affected, and the first thing Sam really has to deal with in Dean’s changed behaviour, so like with a lot of things we’re sort of going over the precipice. I feel like so far this season Sam has felt hugely hurt and betrayed by Dean’s choices but for all the seemingly irreconcilable differences, they haven’t really swapped the dynamic so much as breaking it. Right as they’re getting to the sort of peace after the fight, we’re now in the place where Sam can have his original image of Dean really truly challenged, and I suppose it starts with him being in this place to fuss about him in a way that’s different than other times he’s been concerned about Dean, because even when he was, it never put Sam in the position of *parental* responsibility that Dean’s always previously carried.

* * *

Dean’s sounding right on the edge of cracking here - Sam implies they’ve been researching non-stop (and Dean would have done even more since he’s not sleeping) but his emphasis on:

> DEAN  
> Maybe we don’t have time!

makes me think he is spooked by the Mark and so on after getting his first taste last episode - and also that from 9x23 where he says he knows the Mark is making him something he doesn’t want to be, he’s now got that feeling of a ticking time bomb. 

Maybe obvious comment with end of season hindsight, but I find it interesting that something from later on gives us a very clear idea of what he might be thinking here, in the sense that we don’t often get direct inner monologue sort of insights on Dean’s thoughts, and he misrepresents himself all the time, but with what he says later, this comment makes completely perfect sense to me… At the first viewing it’s just worrying because of the sense of Dean feeling like he doesn’t have time being vaguely ominous, but with the full picture you can basically model to the smallest detail Dean’s mental process on touching the blade for the first time, the feeling of the kill, his need to get the Blade BACK and kill Abaddon, and his sense of knowing how those feelings are not strictly his, that there’s a… ~darkness~ inside him now, and that it’s growing stronger. His to-do list is very clear, because he’s both driven to do it by the external factors of the control of the Darkness, and from his own motivation to do this one thing before he might lose himself forever.

Of course the other part of this episode for Dean’s internal landscape is also that he’s procrastinating at the same time, because he’s TERRIFIED of that change and while clearly feeling helpless to it in the grand scheme, he can only really fight back against himself by delaying the inevitable. 

(procrastination to revenge and murder is very Hamlet :P Idk if there’s a direct parallel, but definitely themes from a tragedy) 

* * *

this scene ends with Dean pulling out his first entire bottle of liquor he plans to drink all by himself. Aside from the alarming Dean drinking upswing this heralds, he’s very secretive about it from Sam, checking he’s gone as he pulls it out from a stash. More signs of secrets between them, but also Dean fearing Sam’s judgement/Sam policing his behaviour. (And Sam policing him is a continuous theme of season 10, when Dean can’t hide from this being a problem any more post-demonhood, and so is pretty much unable to escape the sort of closely paid attention and concern that comes with Sam having a vested interest in his behaviour/assuming a position of responsibility over Dean)

* * *

Sam takes the car on the hunt, as well, which is sort of necessary because it IS theirs, but in 10x17 he takes that random van he found to meet Cas, while Dean is left with the car while supposedly staying home to research just like he was in this episode. You’d think Dean would let Sam take the car to go to the cinema :P Obviously, of course, showing Sam’s underhanded move by having him “sneak” away in a clandestine vehicle or whatever… In this case Sam is taking the car because he actually is going on a hunt and Dean knows he is, so he’s taking that responsibility of the car with him. I don’t think there’s any other time Sam and Dean purposefully split up but Sam gets the car, though of course the fact Dean’s not supposed to be going anywhere and didn’t plan to means he can spare it.

(I have just remembered the implication that Gadreel borrowed the car to go grocery shopping as Sam in 9x09 which explains why he liked the car so much, but also I guess implies that Sam is allowed to borrow it to do stuff like that off-screen all the time and we just don’t see it :P)

* * *

I wonder if there’s a parallel to make between the soulless woman who hanged herself in her cell after writing doomy ominous scribbles all over the wall, and Dean trapped in the Bunker surrounded by doomy ominous symbols in books. His search looks very messy - he’s pulled the tape out of an old recording, and there’s screwed up pages from old files, like instead of putting it back, when it’s useless he’s frustratedly screwing it up and throwing it aside. It’s fairly destructive, and kind of frantic, to go with his running out of time feeling.

* * *

“How’s research going?” “It’s going”

I’m starting to feel like being trapped in the Bunker researching is almost like a punishment – I know you might think Sam would love doing it, but it’s where Gadreel put him in 9x10 and even though it was BECAUSE he loves that sort of thing, it was still imprisoning him doing it. 

It’s also a denial of reality because of that, which is what we see here with Dean trying to distract himself, trapped alone in the Bunker and left to entertain himself in the very dark parallel to how Sam was, drinking and frantically researching to try and put it out of his mind about the Mark.

Sam distracting him leaves him contemplating stuff after they hang up, and immediately he gets into flashbacks to killing with the First Blade, his hand shaking, until he snaps and drop-calls Crowley. After that the sort of suspension of disbelief of being in the Bunker with a purpose to distract from reality is broken, and Dean gives up trying and goes to the bar for his own brand of distraction

* * *

When that kid gets his soul grabbed in the back of the van, it really does look sketchy until the whole glowy soul-stealing light fills the van. >.>

* * *

Sam eating salad – is that even a meta point? I never have put together a clear picture of the times they show him eating it vs, well, what’s eating him. I have seen it meta’d as some control over what he puts in his body, when it comes to healthy eating, so in season 9 that’s quite a statement because unwanted possession.

There’s SO much food meta in season 12 it’s making me suspicious retroactively that we haven’t been paying enough attention before :P

* * *

Anyway more of the odd soulless people exploration – Sam goes from seeing this to thinking about how HE acted, because the violence and nihilism these people show is very stylised when it comes to them drawing all over the walls, and they’re largely lashing out and angry. 

One of the most important things that came out of season 11 when it came to Sam meta discussion was going back over all the season 6 stuff with fresh eyes, since that season had a load of soulless people too (in much better compare and contrast mode, especially, like, Len vs Sidney in 11x05), and so a much better understanding of the sheer control Sam exerted while soulless to keep doing what he was “supposed” to do because he thought he had to and wanted to play ball with being a hunter, even if he didn’t particularly care about saving people. There were a few times he lashed out and hurt people or didn’t care about saving them openly (and the girl he got killed that he met in 6x22 in his head, and Dean getting that hunter killed in 10x23 were paralleled) but by and large he kept it all bottled down, and it was only when Dean knew and Sam was allowed to relax that the smaller incidents started to become more obvious and Dean knew what was weird with Sam was the complete lack of empathy…

I think the fact that Sam instinctively recognises it here and accurately diagnoses what’s wrong just from gut instinct says a lot about the damage he carries around and tries not to think about…

Giffed this because I wanted to be able to read it and you can’t read it all in screencaps without a ton of hassle, uh, blood cw :P

I feel like it is sort of a good mood board for various arcs in this show :P At the moment Dean is the one succumbing to a dark empty void, and Abaddon is a proto Amara in this episode vs her in season 11 wandering around nomming souls.

* * *

Sam also disclaimers that these soulless people aren’t actually that much like him and he knows he had more control – again, Sam reading some really dark stuff into his own behaviour/memories of being soulless… Did he FEEL this way at the time but (well, not in the way he didn’t feel anything, but this was the sensation of it?) he recognises that darkness in them despite saying their outward behaviour doesn’t mirror his…

* * *

Dean’s now sitting around in the bar; he nodded to the waitress to get another drink, but isn’t even giving her flirty looks while he’s on the phone as a kind of promise to get back to her when the call’s over. Crowley is about to jump out on him, so the lack of interest is probably worth commenting on, since Dean does similar in 9x11, but Crowley catches Dean eyeing up a waitress and tells him it’s a bad idea. Anyway, it seems Dean did not come out here to hook up, but just to drink and be out of the house… Crowley being there or not.

* * *

Is there actually any meta left to write on the whole “which makes me your mistress” thing? I’m not entirely sure there is :P In hindsight, Crowley (… wtf okay I typed “Chris” so please be aware of how tired I am right now) obviously is playing all his cards with Dean already; in 9x11 and 9x14 I talked about how Dean KNEW from the very first scene of this arc, even, when Dean bats away that carnation but goes with Crowley anyhow -

\- that Crowley was after him, and about the mutual flirting. Very, very angry flirting from Dean since it’s like, can I stab you now (but, you know, innuendo), but squinting at his actions and words - which was where I was in 9x14 with Dean playing up his friendship with Crowley - knowing not only is Crowley very tempting, but very successful at winning him over in the end, the overtness of this line is bold but actually, at this point, not exactly stepping over any lines.

(Compare to 12x03 and Crowley introducing himself to Cas in much the same way. I’m fairly certain Cas is not going to be seduced by Crowley in season 12 at any point and actually does genuinely dislike him except for whatever use he has to them at that point, including the fact Cas is not above scoring points against Dean using Crowley (12x08’s opening, humouring Crowley in front of Dean)… Anyway, it’s a direct mirror of this scene and while Crowley tries to insinuate himself as Cas’s husband, which is great for reinforcing the very longstanding language of coding working together as marriage when it comes to the love triangle, he doesn’t actually hold anything over Cas in the same way Dean is wrapped around Crowley’s finger this season.)

Crowley sounds really confident here about labelling them this way, and of course it’s an exaggeration and a joke, but Dean IS sneaking around with him in a way, and again this is such early days, I need to keep reminding myself after getting very very used to Crowley later in the show that this season started with Crowley still in chains, Dean terrified of him, and there being no indication he could be trusted not to try and actually kill them if left alone in a room with him. Since season 8 was a whole lot of Crowley at his most dangerous and murderously-inclined towards them, this is a very abrupt swing around. 

Crowley’s fascination to win over a Winchester seemed to jab a little at testing Sam too at some points, but ultimately he proved unreceptive and Crowley was handed Dean in an emotional spiral on a plate… Everything they do from 9x10 onwards is breaking new ground in trusting Crowley, and having him around, and Dean spending an evening in a bar with Crowley is, well, not hard to see as something you’d do illicitly and on the down low, and a sign that Dean is in serious trouble >.>

* * *

Sam meets Julia because she has absolutely no chill about announcing that demons are real to the police… I don’t know how she thought that would do much good, unless she was hoping that there are others out there in the world who know about this and how to deal with such a problem… She’s very lucky Sam is here right then, and overhears it. Double lucky:

> SAM  
> Sorry. One of who?
> 
> JULIA  
> Men of Letters.

(triple lucky, that she finds the MoL legacy directly related to the MoL guy she met before…)

I rarely include Sam in the Centre of the Universe theory, but this revelation only benefits him, and I think it’s interesting that the centre of the universe theory is so much about family, and Dean has considerably more experience with their family, especially in flashback episodes. This is one of the rare ones Sam has all to himself, not time travel involved, just being in the right place at the right time.

In the long run Sam’s experiences here pretty much only serve the plot to maaaaybe make Sam more hopeful about the possibility of saving Dean, because he saved these souls, but his immediate report on the episode just makes them all the more driven to get Abaddon in the first place, which sends Dean on all those last final steps of the descent. Anyway, it’s sort of clear everything’s in place now, but this episode for both of them is basically just feeling out where they are on these things and giving them a good dose of motivation, for when the push comes. I think next episode is the first with direct demon!Dean foreshadowing (that wasn’t, well, Crowley telling Dean that Dean became a demon after he took the Mark… Although Abaddon’s quickly made demons in a jar are a good example that you can become demonised in a few weeks with the right amount of poking and prodding at a raw soul…) and so I guess this episode would have to be the last one where the rollercoaster is going up, on its way to the drop :P

* * *

> JULIA  
> They were a lovely couple.

That’s some serious mis-reading of the text considering one of them was married with a kid and I’m pretty sure no one has ever turned up a reading of this that they were secretly together :P Suppose you could weigh Crowley’s comment about a mistress against this with Millie Winchester as the off-screen wife, but I think Henry wasn’t cheating on his wife, even emotionally. >.>

Considering we get this from Julia, too, this is interesting as a “reading” of the story, and of course we have 9x18 up next. This makes a better story, with romance and intrigue, so introducing them as a couple, even if it was a weird unrequited pining thing, is one way to sell the story. Especially as we know one thing (at this point, that they did not seem to be a couple at all) and offers an alternative reading, mostly based off how nice they looked together… Then we learn Josie did have feelings. It’s all being told by Julia so it’s based on her interpretation. Is Sam being given a skewed version of the facts distorted by time and memory and Julia not knowing them personally so some of the subtleties are lost on her?

* * *

Meanwhile: the most ridiculous Dean and Crowley flirting scene ever. Understandably not very over-analysed because Dean does the thing with the pool balls, then immediately moves on to playing with a pool cue, and the camera kinda stalks him around the table watching him do all that, and by the time the scene’s over you’re just, wait, what were they talking about?

Who directed this nonsense

* * *

Anyway Crowley leads in with calling Dean “Romeo”, mentions butt-dialling, and reminds Dean that bars are for hook ups all in a short space of time, never mind shifting the blame on him being there to Dean to imply he was the one who wanted the hook up, as well as that reminding Dean who’s the one in control here by implying Dean needed him, not that Crowley wanted anything from him. His line,

> CROWLEY  
> Oh, if only. What’s going on with you, huh? You call me, you hang up. You want Abaddon, you don’t want Abaddon. You want the Blade, you don’t want the Blade.

Especially sounds like the sort of thing you’d find in a couple’s argument, when one is feeling wronged by the confusing actions of the other and wants answers.

In this case, played as Dean not being ready to go kill Abaddon yet, but of course subtextually the whole thing is a dance over whether, I guess, Dean is ready for a relationship or not. 

Crowley’s emphasis at the start on these things (I threw in butt dialling because Dean doesn’t/pretends not to know what it is which makes it sound dirty intentionally or not :P I like to think he does and he’s making it sound like it was worse than it is) does sort of set up that he’s come to the bar essentially because Dean expressed an interest, but hung up before committing to what he wanted to ask Crowley. It could have just been to ask for the First Blade, but it’s played as hanging out/Crowley trying to see if Dean’s actually interested in him.

To start with Crowley has the high ground because Dean called him and of course Crowley would have waited for Dean to snap and do that rather than reach out to him because that was the next step of his plan… The fact Dean HASN’T found Abaddon plays far more directly into Crowley’s desires than if Dean had made it all business by waiting until he had a legitimate reason to call…

Because it’s the first round, Dean is allowed a lot of token protests – telling Crowley to go to hell, we done here, a reminder he will kill Crowley, etc. Stuff which, as I pointed out back in 9x11, the moment Dean gets up to follow Crowley out of THAT bar he’s lost credibility on token protests, never mind they start that conversation with Dean reminding Crowley he will kill him, and Crowley treating those reminders entirely as flirting. That subtext was missing last episode (because Buckleming) but the same deal was there: while Dean was consumed with the power of the blade, he never so much as looked at Crowley like he would kill him, nor did he express anything about it when Sam was trying to prompt them to action to try and kill him once they left Magnus’s house, and Crowley interrupted that before Dean would be forced to agree in front of his brother, where the threats would have to be a lot more than these empty comments.

So, yeah, since 9x10 Crowley has made it quite clear that from Dean, threatening to kill him is only flirting, and Dean continues on doing it…

* * *

I mean there’s a lot to say about Dean’s lack of agency in the wider scheme, especially when you get to the massive forces behind stuff like him having to save Sam come what may, or how that already broke him before he had the Mark by the end of 9x10 and so on, and the fact that Crowley’s seduction is the hugest emotional manipulation…

… Honestly just the fact that he’s genuinely fond of Crowley in the aftermath makes this so interesting to me; interesting and kind of tentative because a few stray lines have squicked me out completely on this, before later stuff sort of retracts that feeling… At this point I think Dean’s fairly comfortable with everything, so it’s stopped feeling like something I need to worry about >.>

* * *

Anyway around this point between the script and Misha losing all chill we have all this discussion of phallic stabbing between dudes:

> CROWLEY  
> Just between us girls, how did you feel when you sunk the First Blade into Magnus’ head? 
> 
> DEAN [looking up from sighting his next shot]  
> Not half as good as I’m gonna feel when it’s yours.

Dean shoots the ball right at the corner of the table where Crowley is standing (aka right at his junk), and Crowley responds by, uh… taking control of the ball, which is a power play where Crowley takes it from Dean and chooses to move it around himself, denying Dean the chance to keep playing for himself… kinda… has Dean by the balls, as it were

> CROWLEY  
> Love it when you talk dirty. You know what I think? I think you felt powerful…Virile…

Set to Dean… literally… holding the pool cue in front of him… jacking it…

* * *

Anyway then they move to Crowley telling Dean he’s scared (also calling him “Darling”) which I think is just Crowley trying to psych out Dean and move him to action to prove he’s NOT scared and so on, although Dean just postures and snarls at this point. There’s no surface text in all the world to cover their flirting, so I have to assume instead that it’s a part of the mind games they’re playing, and not that saying Dean is scared is an attempt to cover over how they’re behaving…

> CROWLEY  
> Don’t scam a scam artist, darling. You’re stalling ‘cause you’re scared.

This does not mean that the fact the stalling takes the form of angry-flirting in a bar is any less angry flirting :P

* * *

> JULIA  
> They gave false names, but later I learned that the man’s name was Henry.

Names are important etc etc. Sam makes an interpretative leap that it was his grandfather, but a very logical one and it seems to be the truth. Henry was mentioned just last episode, and it continues with that legacy feeling that he’s all wrapped up in this, even just by the family connection (I did end up explaining this via the Dean is the Centre of the World theory so maybe this is just Sam coming up against that – super neat but ultimately this serves Dean’s arc when it comes to the family legacy of enmity against Abaddon (it’s a bloodline stretching back to Cain and Abel :P hi I watched 5x13 in the last week)

I think this episode is the only one that ties Sam to Abaddon’s arc at all (he’s been present for a fair amount of it, if possessed by Gadreel for part of 9x02, their last encounter, but he doesn’t really have more than circumstantial EMOTIONAL investment) and even then –

> JULIA  
> Josie. Did you know them? 
> 
> SAM  
> Yes, uh… Sort of. It’s complicated.

The way in which they’re historical figures separated from him by time so he only ever really knows about them in stories – even though he’s met Henry, he’s only seen Josie in the video in 8x22, another device to bring her story to them AS a story…

Which is all a commentary on Sam’s lack of involvement in this… I find it really nice that he has this one episode to bring it to him, and it’s very personal and gives him a completely different stake in it.

Back at the start of the rewatch I talked a lot about how Dean said “saving people, hunting things” with Sam as “hunting things” (aka out for revenge) and Dean as “saving people” – it shifts back and forth a lot after that season, but right now it’s very much a mirror of that dynamic, and as I have said about Sam a few times re: season 9, he really does not have much to do. Over the entire first half his role is to be himself, oblivious to the main plot arc of Gadreel. He only “joins” the season in the end of 9x10, and of course since then has been passively reacting/dealing. He’s hugely behind on all the main arcs, so this is sort of doing catch up for him. Giving him a simple victory here where he manages to save a bunch of people brings the story to him… But of course it’s so much more personal for Dean and Sam is left out of all the major encounters at the end of the season.

* * *

Oh hey, this episode also has a Sister Agnes, which was also the name of the nun who wrote the Book of the Damned – I’m pretty sure she’s just Abaddon’s hired heavy (is Abaddon the Mother Superior? I think so) but anyway… Clumsy name reuse because all nuns seem to be called Agnes (it’s seen as a very old and un-sexy name) or retreading these themes with a different story… 

I always think there’s a very deliberate thematic overlap between Abaddon and Amara, just along a line where it’s all escalating. & Hopefully this storyline is set to peace by Dean settling with Amara instead of endlessly increasing violence (with Abaddon’s death as just a stepping stone moment along the way)… Of course Abaddon either had a Mark or was created directly by the Mark’s power, and would answer to Amara far more than other demons – she represents the same sort of outside threat Amara did, as well as a sort of chaotic, destructive feminine force. Having what eventually turns out to be the way Amara once reach out to this world before with those visions of Darkness the other Sister Agnes saw does link here with nuns being pulled away from God to answer to Amara/the power of the Darkness instead. 

It reminds me of 4x22 as well, with Azazel’s little speech about why build a convent on top of Lucifer’s cage (and the link between that and the Book of the Damned seemed really obvious to me at the time) – and of course this episode ends with Julia in the past quitting being a nun after she witnesses true evil and lost her cause with being a nun as a result of the encounter with Abaddon and how she reacted…

Hm.

* * *

Anyway then we get a huge heaping of Josie tragic backstory between the lines of this argument –

> JOSIE [aside to HENRY as they climb the stairs]  
> I hate nuns. 
> 
> HENRY  
> Why, because she answered me and not you? 
> 
> JOSIE  
> No, because I went to Catholic school and I have a lot of pent-up anger.

(seriously though, props to Henry for even noticing that people address him over Josie – if they were partnered a lot I get the feeling he would have been very sympathetic to her issues with being a woman in an organisation literally called “Men” in the title, and I’ve written before about how that is presented, whenever Josie’s been around before. In this case, I think Henry is over-sensitive, probably very defensive of Josie to a fault, in that sort of ‘not letting her fight her own battles’ way or, in this case, leaping to defend her from something that wasn’t actually upsetting her.)

Anyway couple her last comment with

> HENRY  
> No. My wife would be a widow, and my son fatherless. I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t have a fam–

And I’m guessing this is because she was raised by nuns, probably in some sort of boarding school, and may have fought for every inch she has. Being around religious institutions was probably her introduction to the MoL, one way or another, but despite fighting supernatural evils, she doesn’t seem very pious or mindful of how she was raised –

> JOSIE  
> What’s got your boxers all in a bundle?

She’s come across tomboyish in other moments like the 8x22 video, so I think that’s how she coped with being in the men’s club sort of environment – being a lot more like “one of the guys” with a temperament that helped as she clearly stands up for herself… Honestly I think Henry should have been more suspicious when he saw Abaddon all dressed up for the party, considering I think Josie was in a plaid shirt and trousers in the clip in 8x22 :P

Anyway, Josie is throwing herself all in because she has nothing to lose, everything to gain, and this is her chosen profession (and interest – 8x22 again showed how she had a fascination and stomach for the job a lot of the men didn’t have):

> JOSIE  
> It’s called learning on the job. And you know damn well this is the last assignment before we are full members. 
> 
> HENRY  
> Therein lies the problem. As our initiation grows closer, I… I worry that this might be a selfish endeavor on my part.
> 
> JOSIE  
> Selfish. How? 
> 
> HENRY  
> If anything were to happen to me, what of John? Millie? 
> 
> JOSIE  
> They’d be proud to know that you answered the call. 
> 
> HENRY  
> No. My wife would be a widow, and my son fatherless. 

Henry is more worried about everything – raised up in the society and all, it’s the family business, but one he feels would be a lot safer as the “glorified librarian” side of things. We know he also had an interest outside of their main, safe studies because he was friends with Cuthbert Sinclair and even visited him, but this is right at the end of the MoL’s story, hence all the dramatic irony, and if field work isn’t necessary, Josie wants the extra points from doing it but Henry is nervous and starting to feel like the settled life isn’t so bad after all, now that he has responsibilities outside of the MoL…

I think this conversation is mostly to establish Josie as “disposable” from her perspective (this conversation has been paralleled to Cas’s pining over Dean and saying yes to Lucifer) as well as to remind us of when in time this is – right before that fated initiation night – and to pile on the irony about Henry being upset at the idea of abandoning his family… This encounter sets it all in motion. >.>

But I also like the stuff in here about families and attachments in “the life” – here, MoL but applies also to hunters and hunting, and the difficulty they have with attachments. 

Henry feels burdened by his family not to leap into danger like Josie – not willing to do every part of his job, really; he’s kind of in that one foot in one foot out zone that Dean was in with Lisa, especially if Millie never really knew what he was doing, and John grew up oblivious to the fact that his dad died working for some weird magic cult. Heck, Lisa knew all along when she and Dean were together on the show, so it was healthier than this until it abruptly wasn’t :P 

Josie’s all in, but only has unattainable pining which she knows she can’t act on, and I’ve talked before about how that’s sort of “safe” as well as how in this work environment, in that time period, Josie would have to sacrifice a lot to be “one of the guys” as probably the first female Man of Letters… If she had a kid it would be career ending, most likely, because not like the country is a whole lot greater at maternity leave etc in the present day. Maybe it’s easier to crush on the kind MoL initiate who already has his family but will fight for her anyway. It’s probably not entirely coincidental she’s dressed as a nun through all this – and there’s a lot of ~married to the job~ feeling for Sam and Dean, each having had a few times to reject a normal life or what could have been, and go back to hunting… 

Later, the question is raised of if they could date hunters or find someone “in the life” who complements their way of living better, but it’s all such a mess that Sam unthinkingly keeps his “virginity” from this season for 2 years, and Dean still hasn’t made a move on Cas :P Anyway if that subtext is still to come, the early half of Carver era is a lot like “this is why we don’t have nice things”

* * *

Cool Knights of Hell symbol, shame we never use it for anything any more :P Josie seems to be able to read the symbol from whatever parts make it up, to get “knights of hell” from it, which I guess really just shows how nerdy they are :P

* * *

Honestly what bothers me most in the next scene is just that Julia slept with her door open… I’d say maybe it was policy there but if the Mother Superior & underling are currently possessed and sneaking around at night and want to keep up at least something of the appearance of business as normal, you’d think reminding everyone to close their doors and night before hefting bodies around the halls would be a really good idea…

* * *

Anyway yay Henry and Josie coming to the rescue :D

Abaddon seems to be exorcism proof, like the knife didn’t do a whole lot of damage to her either. I wonder if it would have affected her at all – obviously she’s ACTUALLY possessing someone, but maybe you need to right words. I do wonder if demon!Dean or Cain are literally completely exorcism proof because it’s their own body (at least Cain’s was as far as we knew) and you’d need some other spell to physically banish them to Hell…

* * *

> MOTHER SUPERIOR  
> A woman amongst the Men of Letters? 
> 
> JOSIE  
> Yes. 
> 
> MOTHER SUPERIOR  
> Well, ain’t that a blast.

Yep, she was a total novelty in her time >.> The fact all the remaining demons stop to exchange a look and laugh about this really seems to undermine her position. The next lines are Abaddon being snarky about how much the MoL don’t actually know after all…

(Which might be fair enough but she was also desperate to infiltrate and find everything they DID know, and she clearly felt they were enough of a problem to focus on wiping them out before they could inconvenience her for real)

… Interestingly, though, they have absolutely no question about if she could be a hunter, but just assume that they are when they walk in on them. Clearly, since hunting is often started by vengeance and there’s no formal structure to the society to exclude anyone on arbitrary grounds, it’s always been fairly equal opportunity.

* * *

> MOTHER SUPERIOR  
> I’m trading up from this bag of bones to Mr. Dreamy here. [motioning to HENRY]

Abaddon continues pawing over and objectifying the Winchesters hoping to possess them (this mirrors her doing it to Dean in 9x02). But doesn’t get a chance to do it. Possibly just commentary on her not actually being that much of a threat :P In the wider scheme though, she has been sort of haunting the family for generations; I’m still thinking of the “bloodline back to Cain and Abel” thing and how this is all loosely clumped together under a very specific branch of The Darkness ruining their lives… the Campbell side gets fucked up by Azazel and Lucifer, and thanks to 5x13 we’ve known for a long time how to loosely sort the parents correlating to Sam and Dean’s archangels… Still, the Winchester side of things didn’t have as much of a mythology to it whatever was said in that one scene, and Michael was basically just a metaphor for 99% of season 5 because he was literally in 2 scenes all year, and I’m not exaggerating how small that number is for dramatic effect. :P

* * *

Can’t believe Abaddon stopped mid-attempt to possess Henry to snark back at Josie telling her not to do it.

* * *

> MOTHER SUPERIOR [considering JOSIE]  
> No. That’s not it. You love him. He loves you, too, you know. Like a sister.

You know, Abaddon never actually got into his head, unless the very smallest tendril of smoke sneaked in there like in those scenes in 8x12 where she sneaked information from people with a half-possession. Interesting thought exercise though that she was just guessing that – we don’t really know HOW Henry felt about her, though he was married. (At which point you can flip over everything I was saying earlier and make this the Destiel parallel with Dean being “married to the job” and Cas seemingly unrequitedly pining and everything telling him that Dean isn’t available… Anyway, this is season 9, how reliable ARE our narrators? Not like it’s a theme of the season or anything :P If Abaddon wanted to make Josie’s last free moment one of emotional torment and helplessness, well, why not, she’s a demon.)

* * *

ALSO Abaddon is another mini-Metatron parallel here, with staging the story – we had that in 9x12 with the evil step mom planning to set up the scene after killing Garth, Bess and Sam to incite the whole Ragnarok thing. The Thinman dudes were staging their version of the story to sell the legend, and now Abaddon tells the possessed nun to play dead, so that when Henry wakes up she can tell him that they won, and he’ll be none the wiser… Of these 3 examples, Abaddon’s story is the only one that wins here, and this is riiight before Meta Fiction, where Metatron’s story doesn’t work on Cas immediately… except that it does, once Cas’s motivation shows up late after seeing Dean with the Mark. EVENTUALLY Metatron gets the version of the story he wants, anyway, even if his attempt to stage it was a failure. And then of course you have a rule of 3 on his plans that he sets up, with them all seeming to work somewhat in 9x18 and 9x22 but then of course Cas gets him in 9x23.

* * *

Oh, heh, back to Dean and Crowley and here’s the REALLY unsubtle “DARK ALE” sign by Dean.

Crowley is enjoying the date ambiance with Dean (that he will regret probably by the start of season 10 :P)

> DEAN  
> Shut your pie hole, Crowley.

I know it’s a phrase but lol Dean and pie… in other news season 12 has been so ridiculous about it I can’t even look at pie IRL any more without thinking about what Dean’s repressing right now

Re all the stuff I was talking about to do with their family line:

> CROWLEY  
> I know that Cain gave you his Mark for a reason. And I know that rather than embracing it, rather than looking at it as the gift that it is, you’re sulking like you lost your knuffle bunny. Why are you fighting what you really are? 
> 
> DEAN  
> I’m a hunter. 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Who’s a chip off the old Mark of Cain. 
> 
> DEAN  
> No. When I kill, I kill for a reason. I’m nothing like Cain.

Also that last line, Dean’s already threatened to kill Crowley once today, and now he’s saying this… Since 9x10 and 9x11 made it very clear what Crowley thought of death threats with no follow through, is this amusingly confirming that Dean’s just flirting when he says it? :P

* * *

Misha, off screen: “Can you, like, put your faces even closer together? Closer… Closer…”

Dean subsides back onto his seat when the bartender comes by with their drinks.

* * *

Crowley getting all annoyed that Dean doesn’t recognise obvious narrative parallels is hilarious. Especially because, to recap, 9x11 was so interested in setting up the new Colette dynamic added to Cain’s story, it pretty much forgot to do more than mention Abel because, well, shouldn’t we take it for granted what siblings mean in this story? Anyway we might ~forget~ that the brother-related story is still the most important one to the core narrative (*stares at all the people who were so underwhelmed by this that they wanted Sam to be the Colette instead because there was no apparent story between Cain and Abel), what we GOT was a love story in 9x11, and now Crowley’s agitatedly trying to convince Dean that he’s like Cain… Oh hm yes I wonder why the fandom fixated on the idea of who could be Dean’s Colette :P

Also Crowley so badly wants to be that.

* * *

I want to tell him to keep on dreaming but there’s an El Sol sign behind his head. Aside from the obvious meaning (this is a trap, Crowley’s setting him up by making his own little story with the “hunter” going to try to kill him), in 9x09 an El Sol advertisement showed up behind Cas, and seemed weirdly suggestive to me given the format (a poster, not the neon sign) of the original use of it, where it picked a love interest for Dean with Carmen… Quite amused to parallel those two scenes for the sake of the love triangle. Doesn’t really usurp the wider meaning of the beer signs, especially as El Sol is one of the most obvious examples of the lot, but anyway why can’t that be a thing here :P

* * *

>  CROWLEY  
> I will. 'Cause like it or not, we’re in this together. Your problems, my problems… Our problems.

He just wants to be married already

* * *

I would like to argue that Dean can’t be left alone for a second right now - the start of this episode shows he’s quite manic about researching, and as soon as Sam knocks him out of the zone he was in, Dean starts having horrible flashbacks and the Mark is calling to him… The moment Crowley walks off here, after the comments about how alike Dean and Cain were which could not have helped at all, Dean immediately goes back to having the Mark bothering him again, and when he manages to snap out of it, he immediately looks around the bar, and I think probably would have struck up a conversation with the next person he set eyes on just for the sake of not sitting alone, had he not got distracted by Crowley’s little game.

Anyway, less and less room for Dean to deny he didn’t pretty much want Crowley to join him here. >.>

* * *

The “hunter” that Dean “saves” is wearing very similar plaid to Dean’s black plaid of despair and doom and like, everything that’s too gloomy for even the red plaid to cover :P

“You’re packing a knife to a demon fight and you don’t stand a chance” – when Dean’s whole thing this season is bringing a knife to the demon fight :P Special knife though.

> JAKE  
> Then I’ll go down swinging.

Yeeeah even though you’re a demon you’re still kind of a Dean mirror and in this case, the “you’re fucked” mirror considering Dean kinda dies at the end of this season (hey we’re in the catchment area of foreshadowing for that! Finally!) – I mean this whole thing is a set up but say it wasn’t, Dean acts as the conscience to stop this guy going to fight something much worse than him that would surely kill him… Meanwhile, in the end of the season Dean does not have that voice to tell him not to do it. (Sam and Cas bench him initially, but he won’t listen to reason about it once he bumps into Sam working the case)

> DEAN  
> You ever taken on a demon before? Yeah. Well, trust me when I say that when he’s done with you, he’s gonna go after your family. He’s gonna go after your friends. Hell, he’ll go after your prom date. So, if you want to do that, if you want to damn anyone and everyone you’ve ever loved in the slightest chance that you could win, then by all means, pal. You go right ahead.

Is the “prom date” comment about Lucifer having demons possess Sam’s prom date?

Dean argues him out of it as if they BOTH don’t stand a chance, when really of course he just does not want to fight Crowley because they’re hanging out and Crowley has the First Blade and basically it’s just too much of a complicated mess with Dean relying on Crowley & Crowley entirely responsible for the mess Dean’s been dragged into for Dean to turn on him just because another hunter shows up. 

Not that Crowley’s RIGHT later when he thinks he’s won Dean over completely, that Dean was protecting him. Dean didn’t want the hunter to get killed, and he certainly didn’t want to answer awkward questions about why he’s with the King of Hell… “Jake” accuses him of cowardice of not wanting the fight, and is ~remarkably~ uncritical of why Dean might be with Crowley (hmm I wonder why :P) so it makes a sort of scenario where Dean is not exactly being challenged about what other hunters might think about this – he escapes with his dignity intact in a way. He asked for trust, and didn’t get any comment back about the betrayal of working with a monster (in 9x11 Tara DOES challenge him over it because she’s not a stooge of Crowley’s) and so Dean can just send Jake on his way without getting any serious doubts about working with Crowley, having defused the situation favourably.

* * *

Anyway of course Crowley setting up a little play for Dean to get involved in is very similar to Metatron testing out Cas with his story next episode. Crowley wrote this scenario a bit too well for it to actually tell him what he needs to know about Dean. 

He’s right that Dean would stop someone trying to kill him who would get straight up murdered if they actually went at Crowley alone, but it doesn’t really prove Dean’s loyalty TO Crowley, except that he IS on Crowley’s hook for the First Blade… This seems a bit excessive at this point, but the whole set up is a test run in a way for the whole howling at the moon phase – and of course the fact Crowley got Dean’s motivations critically wrong is the whole plot point there between them, as he tries to coax Dean into working for him/ruling Hell with him etc and generally getting more and more fed up that demon!Dean just isn’t as beholden to him as he hoped and expected.

This episode gives him way too much confidence about his sway over Dean. I really think Crowley believes himself when he says “we’re besties” at this point – partly because of Dean protesting too much about everything, but I think also even though Dean really doesn’t seem to be acting like a friend, he thinks that the hook he has Dean on is *enough* to control him… Of course Crowley has observed a lot so far that would give him a reason to think Dean’s  been a fairly easy mark to manipulate and their final conversation is full of that stuff; I think he just over-estimates where it’s all leading.

Like, yes, getting Dean along for the howling at the moon stuff IS a victory in the short run and Crowley has definitely affected him/won him over to some degree, but from the start even before Dean had the Mark (so before Crowley had any real influence over him) it’s been that Dean works with him more out of his own self-loathing than because he was humouring Crowley in a way that begets unlikely friendship, at least at this stage of things. 

He said in 9x10 that he was poison, and I think Crowley is like the one person they know who Dean can’t ruin because he’s already The Most Awful from Dean’s POV. Dean said it about Sam, really, but I think Cas is included in that too, because Dean’s not blind to the way Cas has changed over the years because of him – and that Cas made a serious compromise to become and angel again, because Dean’s not stupid and Cas is terrible at lying about stuff like this and Dean does ask him a fair few concerned questions about it that Cas doesn’t really answer, back in 9x09 and 9x10. Cas is definitely someone Dean can ruin, especially when he starts so high on a pedestal to Dean (season 6 was great for knocking Cas down from that and things being rebuilt from scratch after Cas came back in the end of season 7 but even after that and they seem great, Cas did tell Dean he did everything for/because of him, so that definitely counts towards ruining Cas too if nothing else >.>)

Anyway, Crowley lies to Dean about still being addicted to human blood and it’s never really a thing ever again, except for the fact Crowley remains considerably more emotional/empathetic from now on because the show seems to find him (and Cas) easier to write this way. I’m not grumpy about that, I swear :P I already complained about the yo-yoing in 9x16 because Crowley hit too much rock bottom, and it was just too messy for the much more collected, manipulative Crowley of the entire rest of the season or even the second half of 9x16, but shh. :P

In this case, he is trying to make himself seem less threatening to Dean by playing that they’re both just messed up, and again, using empathy as a weapon, assuming Dean will understand this and using the fact he should do against Dean. He rightly identifies why he has control over Dean:

> CROWLEY  
> Well, I was going to, but then after very little soul-searching, I decided to embrace my addiction. What about you? Takes a junkie to know a junkie. You just want to touch that precious again, don’t you?
> 
> DEAN  
> I want to kill Abaddon. That’s what I want. So, whatever happens with the Blade, I can’t worry about that.

But of course his conclusion once Dean leaves that they’re besties is taking it too far, even if we also factor in the subtextual interest between them, and that Crowley is reading the signals from Dean loud and clear…

(I’m really thinking I ought to zoom through this episode again and collect all the moments when Crowley blatantly hits on Dean and then gif Dean’s face after because wow. Now I know they hook up? Dannng)

* * *

(Shh I haven’t re-watched season 9 since season 10 aired… this is like, the most rollercoaster-y rollercoaster ever. I literally caught up my friend the day of 10x01 because she managed to prolong the watch (which is the last time I did this part of the show) juuuust enough that she literally did not go more than 5 minutes with the cliffhanger that had been killing me all summer, and I will never forgive her :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> I find her, you bring the Blade.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> It’s a date.

I mean… I can see why Crowley thinks he’s got Dean in his pocket :P

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Of course he saved me. We’re besties. And now he’s ready.

The surface text of this episode DID work fairly well that he managed to annoy Dean into getting past his mental block against finding Abaddon – his line about “whatever happens with the Blade” is the final “fuck the consequences” moment for Dean, and I think from this point on there really is no going back, or at least, at the start of this episode he was having trouble accepting that there would be. I guess not until 9x23 when he says the blade is making him something he doesn’t want to be that he faces this thought again for real… 

Which I think also obscures where Crowley fails, so coming back here with hindsight that season 10 very quickly showed that Crowley may have been excellent at manipulating Dean to get what he wanted in some ways, but when it came to their actual dynamic, he only got halfway there…

Crowley has been testing Dean against what leverage he has over him the whole time and probably since 9x11 as well, so his comment about Dean being ready feels to me like it’s definitely about Crowley’s confidence in the dynamic and that he was testing Dean’s personal investment in him – the fact the last conversation seems instead to be about Dean’s readiness to kill Abaddon is a sort of bluff of the narrative to put a layer on top of this JUST being about their dynamic, because, well, you can’t admit Crowley thinks he has Dean falling hook line and sinker for him >.>

* * *

Meanwhile Sam gets a lesson in how to restore the souls back to everyone thanks to the helpful demon giving him plot advice.

> SISTER AGNES  
> Souls are a very precious and fragile thing.

This seems fairly to hideously painful foreshadowing for Dean all on its own without knowing he’s currently being demon-ised in his own little jar

(he’s the jar in this metaphor)

* * *

> SISTER AGNES  
> Stealing souls is winning!
> 
> SAM  
> Winning what?
> 
> SISTER AGNES  
> Hell’s crown, nimrod. 

Notable that she was after this BEFORE the whole timetravel thing skipped her ahead to the present day – was she always planning some rebellion? Would she even be loyal to Lucifer? We have no idea how Cain really feels about him but possibly not favourably. Ironically under Abaddon Hell might have kind of sucked more than normal (and a lot of danger for humans) but no apocalypse? Makes you wonder if the fact she pre-dates EVERYTHING means Azazel was just a little nervous of kicking off the plan with her in the picture and only started his search once she wasn’t around as a threat :P

* * *

Good use of phones, shame it got smashed :P I’m just imagining Sam sitting around in his room recording the exorcism. Neeerd.

* * *

He probably did it a couple of times, also in silly voices.

* * *

The human soul Sam frees does kind of move like the light blob fairy

* * *

I’m assuming they don’t look similar up close.

* * *

Anyway this whole bit where the souls whoosh back is really beautiful. Yay short-term feel good victories for Sam. :D

* * *

He needs a good day here and there.

* * *

Also getting to laugh with Julia about dating her.

* * *

> SAM  
> After witnessing what you did, why didn’t you warn Henry about Abaddon?

This is one of those things where Sam is so massively understated I sort of feel the need to point out the enormous weight of family history and how this action basically changed the whole course for them in some ways by changing John so abruptly from being raised a MoL himself… 

Sam is concerned and curious and probably privately feeling very emotional about it, but you could almost write it off as him just asking out of idle curiosity. Julia doesn’t even really intuit it out of him, as Sam brings up that he has a question first. This is just one of those Sam things - too good at compartmentalising for his own good :P 

In this case, he never reveals to Julia that he’s related to Henry, sharing the surface details – that he’s a MoL himself – but not that he’s personally connected to the story. She may or may not suspect (probably not if she tells him without too many significant looks) but it’s not really a shared story between them. She opens up far more to him than he does to her.

* * *

Has anyone written much meta about all the yellow flowers she has on her? I can’t think if she’s really a narrative mirror to anyone – she seems to be very much her own person and I don’t think this episode has a great deal of emotional impact on the story when it comes to Sam’s side of things, as the Abaddon arc wraps up too abruptly and without any more real contact between her and the Winchesters. Since I’m only passing through instead of immersed in week by week meta, this is definitely something I’d leave to crowdsourcing in the fandom and probably not be totally convinced by most of the meta either >.>

* * *

I think she’s just someone Sam really needed to meet because his season from his POV is so wildly different than what’s going on with everyone else. It’s so quiet but also depressing and…

> ABADDON/JOSIE  
> You okay, Henry?
> 
> HENRY  
> Better. We saved lives today. We made a difference.
> 
> ABADDON/JOSIE  
> Hmm.
> 
> HENRY  
> This – our work… It’s a noble calling, isn’t it? I mean, yes, there’s risk, but, gosh. I feel the fool for doubting it for even a second.

He’s basically Henry here

Complete with the terrible irony of Josie saying she feels like a whole new person and the pain he’s gonna go through with Dean turning into a demon. Of course Henry thought of her like a sister, and he was unconscious and missed everything just as Sam has missed large chunks of the most important parts of this season…

* * *

> SAM  
> Still plugging away?
> 
> DEAN  
> Like a dog with a bone. You?

It’s worst when Dean applies the dog imagery to himself

* * *

Sam joining Dean in the research and commenting about how Dean was right that Abaddon really is a threat also sort of brings him in from the cold a bit and shows how this plotline is now his problem too. 

I think he may have felt like he was drifting, more than anything, so far this year of their lives; nothing like a bit of revenge to give a solid motivation to engage with the world around you :P It’s still kind of chilling to see him join in on Dean’s revenge quest by also sitting down with a drink and stack of files, especially when as a false lead of a villain, Abaddon isn’t the real problem, and the elephant in the room between them is the Mark of Cain. Since it just faded out in 9x16, this also buries the hatchet in their argument properly with some actual actions in the text that put them on the same page sort of literally by having them research the same problem together, after getting there in their very different ways and on their very different journeys…

* * *

Anyway I have no idea what I’m still doing here… Meta Fiction is up next and that episode basically turned the entire show on its head for me so I should get to work :P


	18. 9x18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's 2 of these dated a couple of years apart - I did re-read the first one before doing the second so I think there's not TOO much overlap. Anyway they're both here.

*is still deliriously re-watching season 9 and regrets never flailing publicly about 9x18*

It’s been a year, let’s rewatch the trainwreck that turned me into this shipper mess with some serious hindsight goggles. Fair warning I’m only watching at all because I’m ill and exhausted and it’s making me weird so as always the read more is optional when I’m like this, unless you expressly followed me because my delirious ramblings amused you. :P

DID U KNOW this episode spoils itself in the opening moments?

Under the bar, you can just make out the bottom of letters which correspond to METATRON not GABRIEL, for Gabe’s dialogue in the Gas n Sip.

WELL IT SURE AS HELL ISN’T THE ‘TEXT’ MAKING THE STORY WORK WHEN THE TEXT LITERALLY UNDERMINES YOUR WHOLE CONCEIT, YOU LOSER.

… I have unresolved anger about that subtext speech still. It’s been a year. I fuckin’ ship Destiel to this obsessive level because of this fuckin’ speech.

* * *

*Hannah runs at Cas and tries to stab him in the back*

You know, this intro, now she’s Super Important and Possibly God, is amazing for establishing the character for development. She’s all timid and asking Cas at once if he’ll be a leader. She was only alive to be a message to him, and he fixes her up, teaches her a better way, and off she goes to be Possibly God. :P

* * *

I also LOVE the idea of Hannah as Metatron’s proper nemesis. 10x02 is their only real interaction (except for when she briefly worked for him offscreen between 9x22 and 9x23), but that had them really not getting along (understandably)… isn’t it great to think they’ll probably come to epic blows at some point? Hannah is only alive because of his storytelling obsession, some twist of fate she was the angel Gadreel picked to not kill, and by being absolutely unremarkable, she ended up starting a new world order in Heaven and being a really remarkable angel?

* * *

Oh dear god I am shipper trash I just surfed through season 9 in two days I have  _seen_  Cas and Dean do the things that they did in Heaven Can’t Wait and Road Trip within the last 48 hours and yet Cas’s dumb smile just killed me. I am not going to survive Angel Heart. It’s been a  _fortnight_ since current canon Dean and Cas interaction. I’m literally batting around a post about how likely it was Dean and Cas were bumping knees under the table at their family pizza party in 10x18 while watching this,  _how does seeing them sparsely interact over a phonecall from last year slay me_?

* * *

Cas misses his wings. *ugly sob* Cas trust me on this, you don’t want to see them. *clutches heart*

* * *

Cas’s wall looks excessively serial killery because it’s all just pictures of people, some crossed out. Like alarmingly so because there’s no weird lore or monsters or occult anything mixed up in there. Just photos of people’s faces and a map.

They should disguise their mood boards as, like, Pinterest-y wedding planning boards. Randomly designate certain angels Mother of the Bride or something and tack invitation designs around the edges.

* * *

Season 9 ended in a wedding and you can’t tell me otherwise. I am in denial about what’s to come.

* * *

Oh Jesus, Gadreel’s  _car. *clutches heart more*_

I think his jacket looks like the one Claire is wearing in the promos for 10x20, so I am unofficially dubbing him, like, weird uncle in this strange relationship that gives Claire 2 dads, and she inherited this from him.

She’d approve of him wearing a hood just to be sinister. They’d be so punk rock together. Happy AU where Gadreel (who didn’t die at the wedding because this isn’t Game of Thrones) babysits Claire and they sneak out to rock concerts. Cool Uncle Gadreel is life.

* * *

Gabe’s jacket I think is one of those with the zip where you can attach a hood and honestly I don’t normally judge these things, but Gadreel has you completely out-dressed, mate.

* * *

Is that green couch the one that was behind Cas when he got his wings back?

  


CONSPIRACY.

* * *

Was the line about Downton Abbey foreshadowing for Mrs Paddimore showing up in season 10 as an evil witch cook?

EVERYTHING IS A CONSPIRACY.

* * *

Not like there’s any parallel with Gabriel road tripping with Cas and then a season later Metatron doing it, except that Gabriel was Metatron all along. Cas never punched him anyway. I don’t think expectations were met when Metatron tried it in person. Reality never lives up to the fiction, mate.

* * *

This is such a confusing episode with the way it’s shot (intentionally). That alleyway confrontation between Sam and Gadreel has two hulking guys approach each other in the shadows, with Gadreel’s knock off car and the Impala kind of framing the encounter. But Sam doesn’t wear a leather jacket.

That last comment directed to the complaints department of the universe.

* * *

“The angels need a leader. And it’s got to be someone like us. Someone different.” 

And yet Hannah, boring angel of no particular relevance or point to your story, is the one who you have to grudgingly accept is running Heaven better than any time since God buggered off.

Yep I need Hannah and Metatron as deadly rivals next season. This has got to sting him. :P Metatron literally complains about boring angels and stupid angels and uses angel as an insult and like… Hannah has nothing about her which makes her stand out. She was just given the time to learn and discover and see things Cas’s way and…

*looks smugly at Metatron*

* * *

Wasn’t that hug unscripted? And then Cas finds the hole in his coat, also unscripted (by Metatron). The last scripted thing was the sneak peek the opening of the episode gave us of Metatron’s script (see the screenshot at the top), and that’s the thing which spoils that it’s been Metatron all along to us and then to Cas. Literally as he’s typing it Cas is realising what’s up.

Basically what I am saying is that this episode is even more meta than I ever realised. Its own framing loops from the spoiler to the spoiler, via an unscripted moment, and an unscripted moment, and these moments all on a different level of the text, subtext, actor intervention, and viewer participation. The fact the word “METATRON” was covered up with something and just poked out the bottom literally makes it subtext as in text that was under something.

Ha ha stab me in the eye with an angel blade.

* * *

I’m pretty sure that after the repeat of “What makes a story work?” was about the point, one year ago, I signed the contract to sell my soul to this stupid show.

* * *

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_thread](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNarrative_thread&t=NGRhZWM4NmFjMjA1NjlmODUzMDU2Y2I1MzRhY2E3YTIxNGZiNjJlYSxuaHJJMVNMSw%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F117293790233%2Fis-still-deliriously-re-watching-season-9-and&m=1)

That’s what Metatron pulled out of Cas’s coat. :P

* * *

Do you just think about this scene and the little bits we saw with Metatron and Gadreel and have  _all_  the sympathy for Gadreel putting up with constant pretentious creative writing lessons? And Metatron didn’t even give Gadreel the pop culture download.

… This scene is making my anxiety flare up that the library in 10x18 was a trap.

* * *

Teeheehee okay so a little bit of my “rewatch season 9″ motivation was for laughing at all the Dean x Crowley foreshadowing (dear  _God_  how could we have expected season 10′s subtext to play out  _any_  differently based on season 9 in hindsight? :P) and part of it in the post MoC stage is Dean constantly phoning Crowley for help and not getting an answer, and Sam’s dwindling amusement/growing fear about this (he starts off the run with the whole ‘you ever think he’s just not that into you’ which WOW is ironic later :P) but here we have a nice little moment of framing it as the whole Crowley/Dean/Cas love triangle which makes up the subtextual romance in season 10:

“No no no, Crowley’s the only one that can do that and I’m in no mood to call  _that_  dickbag. We need Cas.”

*cue needy anxious boyfriend Dean panicking for Cas*

* * *

Dean says “I got this” about torturing Gadreel.

He don’t got this.

*more parallels with his boyfriend*

Aah, season 9. When Cas vs doors was a story of frustration and woe.

* * *

Actually Metatron saying that he kept Cas alive because he thought he was entertaining makes me less anxious that Metatron let him get his grace back, mostly because I think he’s curious to see what Cas would do next. Metatron obviously thinks that he’s still got enough going for him if he has the demon tablet (and Cas is too slow to cause more than interesting antagonism to Metatron’s plans - he’d hate anything to be TOO easy :P) that he can handle it. 

Well I mean, first Metatron wanted to play Sims with Cas in 8x23 and was interested in that same abstract way you watch your Sims’ lives… I bet he’s the sort to delete the ladder to the pool. Good thing Cas *didn’t* listen to what he said immediately after taking his grace. :P

* * *

I know this episode is framed to not show us anything, but one of the things we don’t see is Cas finding out that Gadreel’s been captured by the Winchesters. I’d have loved to have seen his face. We saw him light up when hearing Dean’s voice once already this episode.

* * *

Ahahaha hahahaha haha “I LOVED Humanity.” Urgh, Gadreel. I know everyone went wild comparing this line to the obvious other one to show it was Metatron manipulating Gadreel and not necessarily a comment on Cas, except for in what it didn’t say in that yawning gap after “love”… But Metatron’s got a certain knack for getting under people’s skin. It took him a while to figure Cas out, but think of all the open-ended unanswerable questions he asked him in 10x18 where Cas couldn’t say where he wanted to go or what he wanted to be. In 9x14, Bartholomew asks Cas some similar questions: 

> CASTIEL  
> And I’m free to go?  
> BARTHOLOMEW  
> Of course. Though, I don’t know why you would. What’s out there for you, Castiel? What do you really expect to accomplish on your own? You’ll never find Metatron that way.

There was a not completely insignificant gap after “what’s out there for you, Castiel?” - long enough to be a gap, but not long enough to let him answer it. He jumped in with an assumption that Cas would need to work with someone and that he was looking for Metatron - fair enough surface analysis, but avoiding the big confusing questions of who Cas is and what he actually wants that Metatron nailed in 10x18. Metatron, crap as he can be, does seem to get the subtext of the people he works with/against. His manipulation of Gadreel leans heavily on the story he’d know about him.

… I mean not like I’m implying Metatron knows most about Cas from reading those books on the internet (as Charlie helpfully reminded us twice in a row in 8x20 and 9x04 - so Robbie clearly had the books’ ongoing existence on the internet in his mind) and [not like  _I’ve_  ever implied that the books are a  _hilarious_  shipping manifesto](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/108911450713/he-seems-helpful-and-dreamy).

* * *

Oh god I forgot there was Terrible Winchester Angst here but of course this was what season 9 was about… 

Gadreel telling Dean as if straight from the source that Sam wouldn’t trade his life for him. WELL GUESS WHAT. *stares down the last couple of episodes where 10x18 dragged all this season 9 trauma up again and then 10x19 showed Sam trying really hard to trade his life for a chance to cure Dean*

Honestly can’t tell if Sam was only driven to his latest dark descent  _by_  all the emotional blackmail over the last couple of seasons and Gadreel was right speaking as of Sam being oblivious to the whole Zeke thing, which obviously changed once he was out and Sam was evaluating the situation with fresh eyes in the wake of finding out what Dean did.

* * *

Hey, Cas’s car for 100 points! True story: I honestly fucked up and didn’t realise Cas kept that car from Road Trip, until somewhere deep into the summer hiatus when we were seeing season 10 spoilers, and of course Cas was doing a lot of roadtripping and I was like  _oh_. I just assumed he had a series of beige cars and that was the joke.

* * *

I love the cuts back and forth here and the one from Cas’s phone to Dean’s is especially painful with the subtle link between devices because  _aw they were communicating back then_. I miss them talking to each other. Remember how hilarious the end of season 9 was with Dean just casually phoning Cas up to chat that one time? *clutches heart yet again*

* * *

Urgh Dean with the bloody knuckles after beating up Gadreel, just like the unexplained bloody knuckles after killing Cain in 10x14, and all out of it in a muder-haze, just like after killing all those dudes in 10x09. With the bonus demon!Dean foreshadowing  _all over_  this section.

* * *

I wonder how long Metatron was willing to wait for someone to give him a good line to show up and snark at.

* * *

*whimpers at Cas gravitating to Dean’s side*  _I am trash they’re just standing next to each other pull yourself together Lizzy_.

I guess that was necessary for how they ditched him and left him in the parking lot. You know, at least back in season 9 we  _saw_  Cas getting left behind and separated from the party. This season he just sort of drops off the radar between episodes. :P

* * *

*Lizzy’s ongoing year-long feud with The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More*

I think Metatron ships Hannah x Cas. I’m just going to blame him for planting a seed, and throw it onto the pile of things which ended up with Hannah hilariously taking over as the next named figure in charge of Heaven after him. You reap what you sow.

And thinking of sewing I’m still sad about that deleted scene of Cas sewing his coat not making the cut, even if it was for the great good of the glorious montage of Cas taking off the coat to the warning about loneliness (and ARGH he takes it off at the Last Supper scene because  _he’s not lonely there he’s with family_ ) and then the perfect timing of “without love” to the shot of the Impala and then the whole Cas walking out into a new sunny morning to greet his new angel army with the music telling him the sun isn’t going to shine any more over and over after the “love” has just been established, and… *flips table* This is  _worse in hindsight now the coat thing has come full circle fuck you very much Robbie_.

 

* * *

 

Or: A deep shade of blue is aaalways there~

I’ve been reflecting on this episode as I get closer to it in the rewatch, specifically on the fact I’ve ended up tagging Carver era “Marshmallow era” because of this exchange:

> DEAN  
> This ain’t over by a long shot, Crowley.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Really, Dean, who writes your stuff? A marshmallow?

back in 8x01, when Carver had just returned after a 2 year absence. I think it’s the first commentary on writing in the era, and it’s self-deprecating and sarcastic, but betrays a lot of anxiety about writing… 

I think each era so far that we have to completion has its own anxieties about storytelling - Kripke era broadly just wants to get the story finished and over and done with. All the archangels at one point or another express this desire just to get to the end of the story already. There was always an original plan, and all the plotholes in it are smoothed over by reassurances it was always meant to be this way, that everything was always leading to that one moment of confrontation at the end. We know that the story really did go all over the place compared to where they wanted it to go because we’ve heard plenty about the original plans, the story arcs they had to abandon, the writers’ strike bang in the middle of it and so on. There’s self-awareness to this, and in the end the characters go where the story took them, subverting the original plan. There’s a lot of relief that the original story is over, never to be told again. Chuck is free to leave.

Gamble has a much harder problem, best summarised by Edlund in 6x15 and 6x20 (for silly reasons and then serious ones) of how do you ever follow on from The Original Plan and being left with epic trailing plot ends, and characters who all reached the end of their original arcs. There’s a lot of despair and confusion and headless chicken running around moments, and though season 7 starts with a new villain, all the emotional arcs are still tidying up residual angst from Kripke era. 

8x01 purposefully attempts to start as a blank slate, but the anxiety about writing well is there from the start, and the author-avatar Metatron shows up by the end of that season, obsessed with stories. This episode has so much in it, but from the Metatron side of things, the end of season 9 is full of the obsession to tell a good story, being thwarted by plot holes and loose ends he forgot about, and the characters being more powerful than the writer and overwhelming him despite his attempts to wrangle them into what he thinks is the best, self-serving story. This episode sets up The Bad Writer as the villain (but also as the mirror to Carver) and just like I’m not entirely sure Gamble was aware of the irony plaguing her era (in the same way Edlund was, anyway), I am very darkly amused by Carver not seeing his story through to the end, but also kind of sympathetic to the feeling. There’s no original vision, there’s inheriting this third hand story and trying to wrangle it through loop after loop of renewals and plot accordions. If he ever had a plan it was ditched like Metatron screwing up drafts and trying again, redrafting on the fly and careless of characters and plot so long as it gets them where he wants. When he comes up against a plot hole that takes the “viewer” out of the story, it doesn’t deter him and he just tries another take on the story.

Not that we have much to go on yet, but Dabb era seems to be taking the story and turning it completely inside out and starting over from the top in a way completely different from Carver’s blank slate; the ending of 11x23 shot down one of the most used tropes on the show and took a few dozens others out along with it, and Mary’s return upsets the entire narrative to the core. On the other hand Carver re-uses tropes over and over - I’ve talked about Abaddon and Amara’s similarities a lot down this end of the season, but there are a lot of plots where Carver era picks up some other season and shakes it down for ideas - sometimes interesting variations but mostly following the same patterns. It certainly feels a lot more like re-drafting and re-drafting the same patterns of the universe, and for the Sam and Dean story, was beginning to become a depressing, endlessly repeating cycle downwards of sacrificing and bad decisions. 

So, this episode as a microcosm of all that. 

(I suppose the writing anxiety in Dabb era so far has been expressed by Lucifer complaining about endless re-runs. Even while the show tries to be new and different, there’s enough of the same-old same-old in other ways, it’s the hyper awareness of being in the twelfth season. Whether that’s an omen of how Dabb leaves/the show finally ends or not like all the others… we’ll see :P)

* * *

Anyway this episode has a very special place in my heart for slam dunking me into the Destiel dumpster, so time to flail at it :P

* * *

The recap is entirely inconspicuous, basically announcing, hi, I’m a plot episode. It does drag in the Mark of Cain stuff, Metatron, and Cas getting his grace back and getting mired in the angel war, so it seems like it may be cluttered. The only line with any actual warning of what is to come is Metatron telling Gadreel, “We are writing our own epic story here”

* * *

Gosh I love this opening. I still remember the nervous electric feeling of locking eyes with Metatron (thaaat came out wrong) and having him talk directly to us for the first time. Even Chuck didn’t seem to know where the camera was :P

That’s our first layer of the text: us outside the fourth wall watching, deciding on Metatron’s question about what makes a story work (The answer is: all of the above. But he put an emphasis on “subtext” which points it out as the part of the story that we may have been missing, but perhaps needed to see most of all to make the whole story work. As I’ve been pointing out as I go, so much of this season needs hindsight from season 10 to be crystal clear: the Cain parallel from 10x14, and especially knowing they played the Drowley card face up instead of in the subtext next season) … and what gives a story meaning. I’ve already said how that forces the answer to be “us” because Metatron ASKS us to decide which of the two - the writer or the audience - but of course the fact he is asking us… We’re now active participants/characters in the story from beyond the fourth wall.

The second layer of the text is the “real” story, with Metatron actually talking to Cas, and we are sitting in Cas’s chair, as it were. We don’t know he’s there yet, so only coming back to this moment after the reveal that it makes sense. At the moment the entire “real” story is the subtext to this moment where Metatron reaches out of the fourth wall, as it seems like he’s just delivering a PSA to us from some place up on high where it doesn’t seem like he’s engaged with the real story at all but acting almost as a messenger from the show to us. 

The fact he’s asking Cas what makes a story work and what gives it a meaning is a VERY different and far more complicated question that can only be answered by Cas and whether he does or doesn’t it’s a characterisation thing to speculate on his response, within the main text.

(The third layer we haven’t met yet, but is the story that Metatron tells, of course blurred with the fact it’s going back and forth between a story taking place in the main layer of the text, and the opening of the episode starts in the “real” story - AND Metatron’s story seems to start with a play-within-a-play of Gabriel on TV (which of course is a play within a play within a play for us)

* * *

Metatron takes control of the show itself on another sort of meta level by inserting his own title card. Because of course at all the levels of writing, there’s him knowing he’s writing the story IN-UNIVERSE, aka the stuff with his typewriter, but there’s also the fact that he’s existing in a story to us, in meatspace, and so he “takes over” the normal format of the show, by inserting a title card he likes better, saying, this is my story right now.

He does it in-show, too: the glimpses of the Supernatural books by Carver Edlund strewn around his office, is the Original Story, and while he burns a copy, he’s also using them for inspiration, and knows his writing is a knock off of it; he takes Gabriel out of his rightful place in the text (that is, lost to the Original Story) and finds a half-baked excuse to shove him into the new draft. He knows it’s a continuing narrative, because the same characters are still active as the heroes of the books, and now he finds himself having to deal with them, he wants to take that old narrative and twist it to his own ends.

* * *

So he returns the story to the original characters as the starting point; he knows it’s their narrative (and probably understands the terrible pull Dean has as the centre of the universe character, having sized him up at the end of 8x22 with a weirdly under-valued conversation in fandom) and so he puts Dean on screen.

(I can not believe that the next level down from this, is Metatron starting a story to Cas with the hook of ‘naked Dean showering’ and okay it’s a wee bit more subtle than the ‘naked Deans in the fake Heaven’ but I don’t see much difference in Metatron’s intent between these two moments :P)

* * *

The fandom has, however, completely run with the confirmation the Bunker’s shower room is a communal space.

* * *

Meanwhile: the same over-the-head shot of the Bunker map table with the railings used to imprison a character who’s due a bad time that we get a lot in episodes by this director, who I’m starting to think just likes perching above the set:

The war room continues to serve its purpose as where characters go when they’re really really stuck in the job. At the end of last episode Sam had to commit to the Abaddon killing mission because of what he saw - Dean off with Crowley agreed too, specifically on the point of no matter what the consequences, despite his horrible feeling about what the Mark is doing to him. Sam is the one who will take the emotional hit for this, since Dean will be too busy being a demon to care for several episodes… Anyway, Dean’s frantic researching was set in the library, the “home” space, while Sam’s working on it in the space they use when it’s about the job. He hasn’t quite realised the personal danger yet…

* * *

Re: a theme from earlier in the season, Sam and Dean isolated together in the Bunker… Their argument is sort of shelved for now, but Dean is angsting in the shower, while Sam has been researching (and not in the room Dean made his base camp for research). Dean comes to join him and I wonder if he was off showering just because he had to give some semblance of normality, that if he’s not sleeping and not in the mood for food, wandering off to shower is a quick fix most of us use to feel temporarily better or ~more human~

Dean ends it just looking at his arm though, though, still harping on the effect of the Mark.

* * *

> SAM  
> Right.
> 
> [noticing DEAN rubbing absentmindedly at the Mark of Cain on his arm]
> 
> You okay?
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah. I’m fine. Let’s get to work.
> 
> SAM  
> All right.

They don’t have any leads on Abaddon, and again the sense the Mark of Cain is the bigger problem: Abaddon is nowhere to be found, but what they should really be concerned about is the Mark. Again, Sam asks carefully, Dean blows him off, and Sam continues to not stage an intervention despite a few worried glances. It takes them several more loops of this to pay attention to an “I’m fine” - it’s Cas who calls it out in 10x01 or 10x02 as something humans say (aka, humans = the Winchesters) when they’re not fine at all but don’t want to talk about it. Lesson learned :P

Anyway, a little set piece on how the Winchesters are doing, and why their current task is utterly futile

* * *

Meanwhile, the real hero of the story! 

(and I can say that totally unironically, because in Metatron’s narrative, he is.)

* * *

Oh Cas and a room full of dead angels :( More bad memories of the time he killed a ton of angels, that last time he was a leader. Bad character research, Metatron, you’re giving him even less incentive to want to lead the angels if you remind him of the times he’s slaughtered them… Of course, that was how Metatron motivated him last time, in 8x22, but at that point they were doing a single individual action, not setting Cas up to lead angels, and Cas is good at action.

I do like the episodes where we join him in the middle of whatever he was doing while he was off-screen. There aren’t many - he does tend to show up either waiting for them or when called. All I can think of right now is 10x14 where again Cas is surrounded by a mass grave, paralleling that time he killed a ton of angels instead this time to CAIN and the way he slaughtered thousands of his own kind.

* * *

This episode is also interesting that it sets Gadreel up for his redemption arc; paralleling him to Cas, we know Cas has been on a redemption arc for this. He hasn’t found it, really, I think he’ll be messed up about it forever, but he has tried so hard, and the path he’s on now, trying to do anything to help sort the angels out, and stop Metatron, is atoning for the mistakes he made trying to atone for THAT. Anyway Cas may get through it and leave because he’s a main character with room and time to find peace, but Gadreel in this respect is a dark mirror who can only sacrifice himself as an attempt to undo the bad he did during this time >.> 

* * *

Hey Hannah! Aw no, I immediately miss you. 

She did pretty well to be in 3 seasons, even if it’s the last few episodes of one, and only one appearance of the start of the other :P It was the entire length of my time in fandom until they killed Hannah, so she’s got more presence to me just by being one of the first side characters I got real time fandom speculation on :P

> HANNAH  
> You took a stand against Bartholomew. Are you going to help us, lead us against Metatron?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I’m no leader.
> 
> HANNAH  
> But you…
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I am no leader, Hannah. But I will find Metatron, and I make him pay.

Cas has to repeat twice that he won’t lead, but Hannah remains hopeful. I feel like the rumours about Cas being a badass have spread pretty far, from those angels that survived 9x14. It’s probably because of this that Metatron has to bring his attention around to how to deal with Cas - the same leave some angels alive to tell the story deal, but done deliberately with Hannah, trying to snare Cas back onto the hook… Maybe even listen to the rumours and wait for an angel like Hannah to start talking to her friends and say she found Cas and where he is.

If the angels are chatting non-stop about him, hoping that if Cas could stop Bartholomew then he might be after Metatron too, is a rival story that was being told that Metatron had to take advantage of. The characters aren’t doing what he wants them too - Cas’s actions sparked hope and support among the angels even though he doesn’t even want it. But distracts them from wanting to join Metatron, and so he either has to kill Cas (historically, not easy :P) or because Metatron thinks he’s so clever, take control of the story that’s built up around Cas, and turn it into something he can manipulate. Since the angels want a leader in Cas, that’s what he builds him up to be in the hope of using it to tear him down.

(I think that maybe there’s some suggestion from him already affecting Hannah and the other angels, causing her to press the point, since from the time Gadreel starts wandering around killing all these angels in an attempt to draw Cas out, Metatron’s on this draft of the story. There have been other times I thought his words were in other angel’s mouths, like Bartholomew meeting Cas, so I’m going with Hannah unknowingly playing into Metatron’s story here)

* * *

The cut from Cas asking his name to Sam saying “Gadreel” on the phone is clever, efficient use of time, and also splices these two storylines together SO closely - the fact Cas splits off into an illusion in a scene is harder to notice because the way these scenes jump to each other, it’s linking Cas to the Sam and Dean side of things very clearly, making you think it’s all part of one story, and obscuring they’re going to be playing in separate levels of the story. A lot of the scenes overlap or feed into each other in this episode if I remember correctly - I think Sam’s dialogue on the phone was over the end of the shower scene - him saying “All right” while Dean is still brooding about the Mark, which gives extra irony to their next conversation.

I also think there is a deleted scene where Cas phones them, which was cut for the sake of this and I’m not bitter because I like this effect, but awww :P

* * *

> SAM  
> Gadreel? Gadreel is working for Metatron? For how long?
> 
> CASTIEL [entering his hotel room]  
> I don’t know.
> 
> DEAN  
> So, Metatron made Gadreel kill Kevin?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> It would explain a lot, and there have been no new prophets, which Metatron could have fixed to his advantage.
> 
> DEAN  
> And Gadreel said that angels are returning to heaven? How? I thought that the spell was irreversible.
> 
> SAM  
> That’s what Crowley said. Look, let’s just find Gadreel and… and beat some answers out of him.

Lot going on here. First of all, Cas is very snarky. This isn’t plot relevant, I just love him.

I think Sam feels somewhat MORE terrible to have been “working for” Metatron even indirectly; “For how long” seems to be wondering if that was while he was possessed or only after.

It also reminds us that WE the audience, outside the fourth wall, have known this for like 10 episodes or something already, and TFW, working down in the story on their own levels, have no idea what is or isn’t happening when they’re off screen. The fact Sam was off in a dream but physically present while Gadreel corroborated with Metatron makes it that much more surreal. Sam’s subtextually present, but unaware of the main plot. We carry the characters into every scene sometimes, but then get frustrated when they don’t know or act based on how we think they should knowing the whole story. “Ezekiel” seemed blatantly untrustworthy but just enough of that was through dramatic irony that Dean didn’t act sooner to deal with his mistake, but what he saw of that was different to what we could guess at.

Meanwhile, Cas covers the prophet plothole - again, information WE knew since 9x10, when Metatron confirms why he had Kevin killed and that he’s flipped a switch.

Then Sam reminds us that Crowley said that the spell was irreversible. He specifically interrupts Dean - who was NOT present for this revelation, since he was off with Cas in Idaho - to remind him that this is only Crowley’s word. 

This is also the first time we know for sure that Cas has been told the spell is irreversible, because of that time Dean didn’t tell him, because blah blah he’s my husband, it’s my job to bring him peace, not pain, etc (hi I just watched 5x15). So this plot catch up conversation might be telling US several facts we know but actually is TFW all catching themselves up and discussing stuff we don’t know that they knew, filling in a lot of gaps in THEIR understanding of the story.

(Never mind the fact that “what Crowley said” is interjected in a way that sounds as if it’s to call the fact into doubt, at least because they don’t trust him. At the end of the season Crowley says he never lied, though there are plenty of half-truths and manipulations and like in 9x17, setting up his own little story to test Dean which of course was TECHNICALLY a lie, but not one Dean could see through easily - it’s up for us to decide if Crowley is lying or not about this)

Finally, Sam expresses alarming hostility towards Gadreel, which I think is part of why Dean sends him away later once they’ve caught him, if he was thinking of how Sam felt. Just, not considering his OWN issues. Or he wanted his own excuse to beat the crap out of Gadreel, but not in front of Sam. Anyway, that’s later in the episode :P

* * *

Cas is still terrible at using a phone camera years later.

* * *

Ah yes I remember how my entire life was ruined when Cas asked some silly question about honourable bars and the entire snarky, fast-paced argument with lots of pent up everything suddenly broke, Dean smiled the first genuine smile in episodes, and Cas’s face split like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

If you want a scientific reason for “why do you ship these assholes” there it is :P

This isn’t the end of the Destiel-related phonecalls this season, but is very much the pinnacle of the collection of incidents where it was all dramadramadrama and then Cas got Dean on the phone and - 

:)

* * *

I mean. Just look at this transcript, especially bookended with Sam actually, you know, WORKING:

> SAM   
> All right. Let me see what I can find.
> 
> CASTIEL [looking at the honor bar fridge in the hotel room; mutters to himself]  
> “Honor bar.” What’s honorable about a miniature bar in a motel room?
> 
> DEAN [overhearing from the phone]  
> Everything.
> 
> CASTIEL [gently with a small smile]  
> How are you, Dean?
> 
> DEAN [in the same tone]  
> I’m fine, Cas. How ‘bout you?
> 
> CASTIEL [whistfully]  
> I miss my wings. Life on the road… smells.
> 
> DEAN (chuckles)  
> Hmm.
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah. Listen, I got a match, and it’s not from the lore… it’s from police records. 

The captions make it.

Also brb need to gif this and

> Dean: What’s it like, settling down with a hunter?
> 
> Cesar: Smelly, dirty. [turns to Jesse] Twice the worrying about getting ganked.

together :P

* * *

Why are Dean and Cas not married yet??? an autobiography by me

* * *

ALSO WHILE WE’RE HERE, Cas saying he misses his wings… Still hurts. :( He answers honestly when Dean asks him that question, and we learn something truly heartbreaking about how he’s feeling.

If this was a rom com, Dean would take him sky gliding after this or something :P

* * *

I think we lose Cas after the conversation, when the lights flicker. He carries on, unaware that he’s about to be abducted/has been abducted, but I think Metatron was waiting for him to get off the phone. :P

* * *

> SAM  
> Yes. We should call him, see if he’s still in business.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah. What was his name?

Talking about their contact in the town, they have another cut from ending a scene asking about a name, to Gadreel walking in on the guy. I don’t think we learn his name except through set stuff - no one says it. The question is asked, but you have to subtextually work out the answer if you care. It also links to the previous scene cut being the same question, but about Gadreel. Now the question takes us to Gadreel. (And of course the deal about what his name was was a huge thing for the first half of the season - the way it had to be asked 3 times before he gave Ezekiel, and his hesitance to answer, were picked up on immediately, so that people were thinking there was more to him all along… Because they read the subtext)

* * *

> GADREEL  
> Good afternoon.
> 
> IAN  
> It’s afternoon?

it was night and now it’s day.gif

This show has a very poor sense of time. I think it’s night time when we get back to Cas, and he hasn’t left his room despite the plan of action they all made… Of course, there’s a perfectly good explanation, if Metatron picked him up in between scenes and he’s hanging around his motel room somewhat fuddled in the story, suspending his OWN sense of disbelief about the rapid passing of time because, well, this is what’s going on right now in the story.

What I’m saying is there’s a plot explanation for a fan fic gap :P

* * *

> GADREEL  
> I’m curious… do you also have fairy bones? It does not matter what realm they were from.

thanks for fixing my biggest complaint about all the new fairy lore you shoved at us. 

This is literally an episode gift-wrapped with a “Dear Lizzy” tag on it.

* * *

> GADREEL  
> Humans never cease to amaze me.

angels, as a rule, are terrible at playing human.

/throwback to all the meta I wrote about Cas playing human in 9x06, since Gadreel is directly paralleled to him when it comes to the queer subtext of the season… I think I talked about it in 9x10 or else in a random gifset after 9x15

* * *

> IAN  
> Griffins and fairies… the hell you hunting, man?
> 
> GADREEL  
> Family.

Re: Gadreel as a Dean mirror - he doesn’t YET but we’re so not that far from 10x03 and demon!Dean stalking Sam through the Bunker armed with a hammer… The threat is in the subtext just from Dean having the Mark of Cain.

* * *

Aaand back to Cas. Time skips explained by Ian (if that is his real name) or just poor time management? He looks like he spent all day packing, as it’s definitely late out now. Maybe he just unpinned every picture on his mood board individually.

He’s considerate like that.

* * *

More Cas and TVs with Gabriel’s intro. Specifically talking to him through a TV (I’ve literally just watched 5x16 where Cas does it :P) 9x09 is a bit nearer in canon and also works well with this moment, with Cas struggling to get signal on a TV before an angel shows up to help him, then of course Gabriel just pops in unannounced, but I find it interesting that 11x18 ALSO fits so well - with Cas lost in a place inside his head, unable to turn the TV off. It’s a good way to say hello, I guess >.> A lot of meta has been written about Cas and TVs, so I won’t go deep into this. Here’s my tag:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/product-placement-angel/chrono>

* * *

Thinking of product placement, the lady in the video is tweeting some nonsense. I have no idea if there’s some point to be made (except saying our characters are overworked and maybe Dean and Cas should hook up for their own benefit) or if that’s just making fun… Maybe Metatron just does not like Twitter because he thinks it’s stupid and you can’t tell a story with it. :P

* * *

Gabriel shows up and of course it’s a mirror to his Hammer of the Gods video, because Metatron’s just stealing whatever. And of course he moves out of it like he was in TV Land, same as Changing Channels.

I’m pretty squarely in the “Gabriel shouldn’t come back” demographic, because I really liked his arc in season 5 and anything else would cheapen the sacrifice. This is a very good way to bring him back because even in the story he’s a knock off, brought back for “fan appeal” and literally anything you think is ooc you can point at him and be like, well, Metatron is a crappy writer, of course this isn’t Gabriel. It’s a fan fic version of him. 

* * *

I think also Gabriel is a good choice because Cas didn’t actually seem to know him that well, but he can talk up a storm, and befuddle Cas out of asking the right questions.

(Like, where the fuck were you in season 6)

> GABRIEL  
> Ohhh, you know hither with a side of yon. I was hiding, captain side eyes, in the safest place in the universe… heaven. But then you and the other two stooges had to go and ruin Christmas, now, didn’t you?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Sorry.

Captain Side Eyes was objectively the best thing anyone ever called Cas until Dean called him Sunshine. I don’t make the rules.

Gabriel blames TFW for the angel fall which is a pretty big mix up when you stop and look at it, but Cas is confused and offers a tentative and not particularly heartfelt apology, I think to make this part of the conversation go away and hurry Gabriel up with telling him wtf is going on and why he’s here. Lumping Cas in with with Winchesters just as an assumption of who he’d be working with all the time is a nice gesture of solidarity between TFW. Cas may be separated off from them, but everyone knows they’re a team, right?

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> But then, your BFF, Metatron,

delivered sarcastically, wondering if written out of jealousy. Metatron wants Cas to be his BFF pretty badly. :P If you write it, it becomes true, right??

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> No. The horn of Gabriel… one of Dad’s little party favors that I never got around to messing with. Metatron dug it up and started blowing, so I came out of hiding.

I’m assuming that’s written with full awareness that it was almost a thing once back in season 6 but then wasn’t. I think the horn is supposed to call everyone to judgement day, and Gabriel of course didn’t WANT the apocalypse, and was already dead on what should have been judgement day, so there’s a good number of reasons he never used it :P

the whole “horn of truth” thing in season 6 gets 1000 times more meta all of a sudden, since this is a great big lie and all. 

> GABRIEL  
> There’s safety in numbers. But Metatron was using it to trap angels, not unite them.

* * *

Ah yeah, here’s “Ian’s Herbal Remedies” a whole 2 scenes later finally answering Sam and Dean’s question.

* * *

I get the feeling from the million bongs in this place that Dean was super fond of this guy

* * *

This episode is cut in such a way I did read a meta post once that suggested Gadreel could have not actually killed anyone and it was all set up to make you think he did. I think it works better for his character arc if he did do it – because if he’s going to guiltily sacrifice himself he might as well have a good reason to want to die right. But it is interesting because it hops between scenes omitting information or leaving you to fill in all the gaps or just to show you one scene answering the other to explain what the last one had been saying – in such a way that if you want to read a wildly different story into the gaps then the episode will let you.

* * *

Meanwhile: Cas is trying to call Dean because of course he is. Careful about breaking immersion in this story, there.

This is one of those things where it seems like Gabriel is talking to Sam and Dean in general and you can assume if this message actually existed they probably would listen to it together… but it’s still funny that he calls Cas their “boy toy” when talking to what we know is Dean’s phone from the answerphone message

* * *

I can’t believe I never thought about Cas’s car in this episode, but I think this is the first time we actually see him driving. He owns the car off-screen in 9x14 but it never made an appearance and of course in 9x10 Dean did all the driving. Now we first see it in the dream… I honestly did make it until season 10 spoilers to realise Cas had kept the car from 9x10. Anyway, this season opens with the Impala driving along while Sam’s in a coma – a remarkable amount of this season takes place in people’s heads… Of course Gabriel is representing almost a voice on Cas’s conscience, one of the few friendly-ish angels they’ve ever encountered… Or rather, one who started unfriendly, but they actually wore down to help them before, and that’s how he died (compared to the usual which is ALWAYS unfriendly, or sometimes starting off friendly before it abruptly becomes unpleasant angels :P)

I guess there is a parallel. In 9x01 though, Sam let Dean do all the driving but here Cas is still the one in charge, even though he’s driving through basically a hallucination. I suppose the road is pretty safe here, whatever complaints Gabriel makes about him driving on the phone :P (which is one of the only complaints we have about it – Dean does it ALL the time. Cas also wore a seatbelt once this season – he’s like a beacon of safety :P)

is it an illusion of control or something? Gabriel’s just here to whisper in his ear? Just like he was supposed to basically just be passing through Cas’s life to inspire him – I guess if this all worked, Cas would have woken up none the wiser to what Metatron had put him through, ACTUALLY thinking he met Gabriel.

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> You think? Most angels aren’t like us, Castiel. They can’t handle this whole free-will thing. They’re sheep, drones. But us? We’re different. We’re rebels… one without a 'cause, one with.

Gabriel does seem to be implying he’s the one with a cause and Cas the one without, but Cas has been fairly motivated, just to do his own thing on his own terms. Gabriel was always the one without a cause, having to be argued onto it after spending millennia doing nothing useful. In Metatron’s terms, though, he sees Cas as pretty hopeless because he won’t engage with the story so he would think Cas has no cause… Cas picking up a “cause” at the end of this episode also turns out to “just” be that he was doing it all for Dean, and not actually being very helpful at all for the angels. Or he wanted to restore order and peace so he could have that all off his conscience and just go be a hunter with Dean – it’s all left very unclear because he fails his actual cause and at the end of the season and he’s left saying he just wants to be an angel because what he wanted has been completely undermined. And stuff just keeps on happening, endlessly, and now he’s not even sure the Bunker is home after too much drama >.>

had he defeated Metatron AND saved Dean, his cause would have probably been revealed to be completely different and Dean n Cas would have been living in domestic bliss for a couple of years. But alas, it’s harder than it looks to get the Mark off of Dean :P

* * *

Also, Gabriel insulting the other angels – Cas has been pretty grumpy about angels (like teaching poetry to fish) but I think he does tend to actually LIKE them and have hope for them for waaay longer than most people. Insulting the angels and trying to say they’re special and not like them is not far off Lucifer trying to flatter Cas into joining him in 5x10 because they were both fallen angels in a way.

Aka, not happening :P

* * *

Cas’s part in this conversation is mostly shaking his head disapprovingly… :P

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> Bitch, please. You’ve been God more often than Dad has.
> 
> CASTIEL (Chuckling)  
> Yeah. Look how that worked out.

Again… Metatron… this is WHY he’s avoiding being a leader. Seriously. Not that you have the empathy or compassion to understand how much this fucked up Cas. I’m sure a lot of angels are envious of the power Cas had – Bartholomew certainly would have been.

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> I always run…From Dad, from the family. I don’t want to run anymore. I want to do what I was meant to do… lead.

This is such a leading statement it sounds almost completely cut and pasted from Gabriel in 5x08 trying to tell Sam and Dean to play their roles, before he got to pt2 of what he was hoping to achieve with TV land. The whole “meant to do” thing.

* * *

Then he suggests they need gas while not even looking at the dash of Cas’s car, because this whole simulation is set up to do exactly what it has to do. Of course Cas’s car will be low on gas at this exact point, and of course “Gabriel” knows when it will run low and when the gas station will be coming up, because plot convenience makes it all happen at once…

#dabb vs cars

* * *

Oh, Cas going in a Gas n Sip. My heart.

Gabriel doesn’t see it that way:

> GABRIEL  
> Ooh, smell that cancer. Delicious!

He has no appreciation for the human need for horrible junk food – he’ll happily eat it all himself because it won’t hurt him, but again it’s sort of mocking of humanity. Considering Cas literally lived this experience and probably ate nothing but Gas n Sip food for a while, it’s especially cruel.

* * *

(Since Cas is also metaphorically running out of gas with his stolen grace burning him up from the inside at the moment, and this episode reveals that, the comment about cancer and lack of gas both seem to apply metaphorically to Cas’s situation. And of course Crowley eventually “refuels” him at a gas station. This is a little bit of foreshadowing there, using these things now associated with Cas – his store and his car – to warn us)

* * *

Meanwhile: that time Gadreel had a car which looked so much like the Impala everyone thought he was stealing the impala even though we just saw him pull up in a big black car a few scenes ago, and Sam is literally over there at the other end of the alley, WITH the Impala behind him.

This scene is like an exercise in how characters can mirror each other, delivered visually with Gadreel and his car one end, Sam and the Impala the other. Funhouse mirrors, indeed :P

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> No. I fight. I lied before. I never watched “Downton Abbey.” I was just trying to fit in. 

I know this is Metatron but… seriously? I can see why he gave Cas the pop culture download :P He seems to assume Cas hanging out on earth all this time means he MUST have watched Downton Abbey… :P I guess because Cas hangs out with the quippy Winchesters who are always likely to mention the shows and movies they watch, surely, SURELY Cas knows something about current pop culture?

Nah, mate :P

But yeah, “Gabriel” said that entirely for Cas’s benefit, but as with all the other pop culture references, it just bounces off him.

But yeah, anyway, shocker, Gabriel was lying. I guess at this point if you picked up that much from some of his unsubtle lines and gestures, you could think it was just because he was trying to pretend he wasn’t being stalked by a ton of angry angels, but…

* * *

Where’s a horn of truth when you need one, eh? :P

* * *

This episode isn’t even at the 20 minute mark and it’s already been a wild ride. Like, we could just stop here and it would have been great.

* * *

> GABRIEL  
> I know you don’t want this burden, Castiel. Neither do I.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> What if I fail again?
> 
> GABRIEL  
> You won’t. You can’t.

Shame this pep talk was completely fake :P But anyway it reveals that all those reminders of Cas being Godstiel are exactly what he’s trying to avoid.

* * *

Gabriel getting stabbed and the blade just drifting through him is like the complete opposite of how he got stabbed, messily, but fake-ly, like 3 times per episode up until this point. He must have more supposedly fatal stabbings than any other character, despite his relatively few appearances :P

* * *

Cas noticed the plothole, and his suspension of disbelief broke. He starts poking at the story in front of him for answers, and discovers that the story never held up in the first place.

* * *

After that, Gabriel REALLY starts sounding like Metatron

> GABRIEL  
> What gave it all away?
> 
> […]
> 
> GABRIEL  
> Ah, crap. I really hate continuity errors.
> 
> […]
> 
> GABRIEL  
> Here’s the thing… none of it was real, but all of it was true.

He was always so direct that especially the last comment sounds like the sort of irritating phrase Metatron would come up with to wax philosophically about the importance of a story.

It also does answer Metatron’s question about what is supposed to make a story work – the story may be a construction, but the “truth” of it is the part you take away when you engage with the story, and the thing that is meaningful. He wanted to shape Cas’s experiences with a story that would emotionally affect him – and did to the point of hugging Gabriel and feeling like the pep talk worked – the “truth” of the story would be inspiring Cas to be a leader even if he saw through it. Of course discovering it was a lie undermines the truth that Cas could have taken away from it as he was being manipulated; the fear is that the writer feels like they’re manipulating the audience and they’ll see through it and no longer like the story. If you put in too many plot holes for convenience like skipping from day to night for dramatic effect, then people start noticing and feeling like the story is fake and all the drama is no longer immersive, because the story itself isn’t being sold very well…

Cas sees through it all and asks if it’s his truth or Metatron’s.

* * *

I swear Gabriel calling him “old bean” is because he watched too much Downton Abbey

* * *

And then as a final parting “gift” that’s kept the fandom hopeful for years, the old eyebrow waggle to “ARE you dead”… Which of course also fits into the whole thing about subtext and who gives the story meaning – we read into that whatever we want to. It may be suggestive or it may just be really in character even for a fake Gabriel who they both know is not the real deal now :P

* * *

Aaand Cas wakes up in Metatron’s study. And we get another view on Metatron saying that line about “What makes a story work”, now with the revelation that he had been talking to Cas all along, and we enter the next part of the text where we have to re-examine what Metatron said as being to Cas.

Because he just woke up, after this conversation with Gabriel where it was specifically talking about the truth in stories, we find out now that Metatron wasn’t talking to us at all (except for how he was, because ON SCREEN we only see him say the one sentence to Cas to indicate we’re picking up on what turned out to be an in media res opening, instead of the whole speech we got, so in a way it stays for our benefit only except that we know he said it all to Cas) – instead, Metatron is continuing his preachy speech about the importance of storytelling to Cas, and now he seems much less savvy and far more Bad Writer-y, all that lecturing on plot devices and character that he tries to set up all his plans by, it’s all just a really terrible way to try and sell an idea or convince Cas that what he just went through was all for his benefit. Cas isn’t going to care about the complexities of subtext while he’s bound and gagged and plonked in a chair opposite Metatron at the mercy of his terrible creative writing classes… :P

* * *

Also I guess the cut from the end of the speech to Dean in the shower was for our benefit only and not Cas’s, except that because he was talking to Cas and then showed us “the story” it still kind of counts.

* * *

>.>

* * *

Anyway.

GADREEL [addressing SAM]

If this is like looking into a fun-house mirror for me, I cannot imagine what it is like for you.

Gadreel parroting a line Metatron used to him back in 9x10 about him in Sam looking at his main vessel working in a bar. He may not even know what a fun house really is, just that Metatron said it and this is the scenario you use it in and he’s nothing if not a quick study :P Having him repeat Metatron’s line is obviously showing the influence Metatron has had over him – Gadreel has gone down a very dark path since we last saw him. Metatron built him up gently through killing specific targets for “reasons” even if they were bad reasons. He’s now completely gone down the path of wrath and left compassion behind, killing hundreds of angels just because Metatron’s plan says they should… So talking like Metatron too is a good indication of how far gone he is, in a way.

* * *

> GADREEL  
> I have been you, Sam Winchester. Your insides reek of shame and weakness.

That’s sort of 2 things at once there – a reminder that he possessed him, and also a reminder that he completely took over being Sam and acted as him in several instances and for an entire half an episode at one point.

Sam also later talks about what it was like having Gadreel in him, or at least the feeling he got from him; he has kinder things to say, and Gadreel also when he’s not riling them up, has kinder things to say about Sam’s perspective; as well as the suggestion that some things Sam said or did in the early part of the season were influenced by Gadreel being in him just by the mood or whatever, without actually being affected/possessed.

For now though, he’s pretty much just trying to make Sam angry, so I think he goes for the things which Sam would be most anxious about showing/feeling. We talk a lot about Sam bottling things up and not showing it, but Gadreel suggests that Sam sort of just has a low level constant feeling of shame, pick what for, and I guess betrays the outer layer that Sam also is always just pretending to be fine.

* * *

We get the end part of Metatron’s speech also layered over Gadreel, about him telling a story, and so again the reveal at the end that he let the Winchesters capture Gadreel, that Gadreel accuses him of, is already hinted at here. While off-screen during that moment when Sam is punching Gadreel, Metatron would be getting to exactly the point where he mentions subtext, probably :P

* * *

> METATRON  
> You have been around since scaly things crawled out of the muck. Would it have killed you to pick up a book, watch a movie?

Cas looks suspicious enough to think, yeah, probably :P We had the same line or thereabouts in 8x17 from Meg to Cas, and he specifically mentioned that books could have spells in them which might hurt him – I’m actually reminded of 12x07 and them walking into that hotel room that Lucifer trashed, and Cas being all practical about fights and spells while the others saw orgy and breakfast in the stuff Cas commented on. Cas might know more about the world these days, but nothing Metatron can do can actually change the way Cas THINKS about the world… Hence the reassurance this didn’t break Cas when he totally fails to understand why the Star Wars quote was appropriate at the end of the episode.

* * *

> METATRON  
> Now do you understand that “the universe is made up of stories, not atoms”?

I do like that quote, though. Even if I first heard it from Metatron of all people. :P Considering he’s manipulating the universe by writing stories, and the SPN universe IS a fictional universe that to us is just a story… it makes a lot of sense :P

(it’s also a nice philosophy for real life and understanding people I gueeeess :P)

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> What are you talking you about?

I love Cas

* * *

> METATRON  
> Second rule? Every hero needs a villain.
> 
> […]
> 
> METATRON  
> Hannah and her sisters…I set all that up, told Gadreel, “slaughter all those who will not join my army, but let one live, one…To tell the tale.”

He really does not get how this makes him the villain and Cas, who he set up to discover all this, the hero, does he? He’s using Gadreel to do all this because he’s the sort of ground level antagonist to Cas, but that doesn’t absolve Metatron of the responsibility of being the one who set it up, because people have actually DIED of this. He’s not just writing a cute little story on his typewriter.

* * *

Also, I think this is confirmation Hannah was unintentionally repeating Metatron:

> CASTIEL  
> I am not a leader, Metatron.

(In the history of this episode being extremely vague and open for many meanings, some people never trusted Hannah and were waiting on the reveal for her to be an agent of Metatron’s because of this – her use in the episode is so ambiguous because she innocently wants exactly what Metatron does, but just from the complete other perspective of wanting to go home and needing a leader strong enough to take them there, since the angels are perpetually terrible at picking leaders for themselves. Hannah being the one spared, who coincidentally echoes this call for Cas to be a leader and is there waiting for him when he answers it, makes her seem extremely suspicious)

* * *

> METATRON  
> Apparently. So… I did my homework.
> 
> [He picks up one of the books from the desk. It is Tall Tales by Carver Edlund.]
> 
> “The Winchester Gospels.” Pulpy stuff.
> 
> [He throws the book into the fire in the fireplace]

Pfft, like a minute ago you said,

> METATRON  
> First rule of writers club… steal from the best

Don’t get better than the Divine Word of God

Of course he’s just jealous that Chuck got to write it all for God and no one asked little old Metatron to take some dictation. Hey, you didn’t even know the apocalypse had HAPPENED. You faked your own death! You have no one to blame but yourself.

* * *

> METATRON  
> You needed to be taught a lesson, and nobody teaches lessons better than good old Gabriel, a.k.a. The Trickster. So… I started typing.

Metatron fundamentally misunderstanding the Trickster if he’s basing this off Tall Tales. There aren’t even physical copies of seasons 4 & 5 as far as we know :P I guess it’s less dramatic for him to pull up Changing Channels on a laptop, and extremely wasteful for him to lob it into the fire. Anyway, I suppose since he keeps calling Cas “Asstiel” he probably does think he’s a jerk who needs taking down a peg or two, but the Changing Channels gambit was much more the lesson and “type” of Gabriel that he used specifically for trying to influence characters’ plot-related decisions. Mystery Spot fits in the blurry line between seeming to just being punishing them for the previous trouble, and with later hindsight, the possibility that Gabriel really cared to try to stop the apocalypse but being terrible at psychology, kind of went at it all wrong to convincing Sam NOT to care about his brother dying. He owned he messed that one up in their final conversation of that episode.

* * *

*Metatron laughs himself silly over Cas thinking Metatron wants him to be the hero*

Metatron does know Cas’s reputation among the angels since he used that in 8x22 to get Cas to help him. I think in the story, it’s much easier to imagine him thinking he could turn the angels against Cas and use him as a villain, his own obvious villainy aside (and as I said, he needs to act to stop Cas looking like a hero to the angels, so his plan is to essentially set Cas up to remind the angels of every terrible thing Cas has done and turn his history against him). But we aren’t in the story – we have the luxury of knowing Cas is a main character and a Good Egg and all that, so we have a sense of dramatic irony AGAINST Metatron that we know Cas can’t be the villain and Metatron sucks because of this… The best part is, Metatron would love dramatic irony, as much as he’d hate knowing there’s some lurking over what he says :P It’s like Destiny but basically just setting yourself up to look silly.

* * *

Because of the way the scenes overlap, we get pretty much all of this line over Cas’s face, re: Gadreel:

> DEAN  
> He’s not gonna crack that fast.

After Metatron tells Cas that he’s going to be the villain

I love this episode.

* * *

> DEAN  
> No, no, no, no. Crowley’s the only one who can do that. And I’m in no mood to call that dickbag. We need Cas.
> 
> SAM  
> Any word from him? 
> 
> DEAN  
> No. I tried him again. He hasn’t called, he hasn’t texted. I turned on the GPS on his phone. He’s still in the same town where we talked to him last.

Dean being a worried boyfriend :’) Also I totally got this wrong, and thought that Dean did try calling Crowley and got teased for it or am I totally forgetting something later? Possibly I’ve just seen this moment in compilation gifsets of phonecalls or Drowley mentions this season and messed it up in my head about the context >.> Anyway, retracting previous comments – Sam spends the late mid part of the season teasing Dean about phoning Crowley, but after a couple of episodes of Crowley contact, and the way Crowley left off with Dean (“It’s a date”) Dean really does not want to engage with him right now. Possibly because every contact, Dean slides further down that rabbit hole.

Also I like that this is, we need Cas to do a certain job for us – but then Dean shows concern for Cas way beyond average because he’s fond of him as well as knowing he can be useful – I don’t think it’s showing Cas is “only” useful to Dean, but that while he can be, Dean also cares for him personally, and will freak out if they’re not in contact when they should be. Obviously the entire tail end of season 11 had Dean freaking out about Cas’s wellbeing so I’d hope I don’t need to keep repeating this point >.>

* * *

> DEAN  
> You’re too close to this, man. 
> 
> SAM  
> And, what, you’re not? 
> 
> [… Sam leaves Dean with Gadreel]
> 
> DEAN [his eyes scarily dark]  
> No. See, I don’t care whether you talk. You’re gonna pay for what you did to him…and Kevin.

Again, I’m pretty sure Dean’s already expressed this exact sentiment to Sam (I think he ended 9x10 marching off saying he’d hunt Gadreel) – Sam questions but like with not seeing that Dean and the Mark is SUCH a serious problem, underestimates again that Dean is pretty much just going to kill Gadreel left alone with him… More of Sam basically mis-reading what’s up with Dean, but also Dean twisting concern about Sam into getting his way with being left alone with Gadreel >.>

* * *

> METATRON  
> Do you know why I didn’t kill you after I stole your Grace? I like you. Truly. Among all God’s little windup toys, you were the only one with any spunk. I left you human because I was hoping you would live happily ever after, but you screwed that up, too. And now… Uh, you leave me no choice. I mean, if you want to get back on board, fine, but you’re gonna have to follow my script. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Well, based on your assessment, that doesn’t sound like me.

I!! love!! Cas!!!!!

* * *

Also yeah historically, Cas vs scripts? Doesn’t end well :P

* * *

I wrote way too much about Cas vs Metatron’s “find a wife” order back in 9x06 and how he picked Dean instead, so I will just treat this line as a reminder of that down this end of the season before we get to the really juicy Cas in love with Dean stuff. He and Metatron are talking about Cas leading the angels here, but in that “you screwed that up too” there’s the implicit understanding of WHY Cas did that… Subtext though :P

* * *

> METATRON  
> Lead the dumb, disenfranchised, rebellious angels against me, Castiel. They will follow you. And they’ll all die, but I’m gonna save a nice, warm seat up top for you. You will be saved.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> No.

He REALLY does not know Cas. Cas does not want any more angels to die.

* * *

Also if he accepted Metatron’s deal for more grace, I’m sure no angels would have been harmed in that :P Pfft. Metatron could have offered to give him back the real thing as well, but like with Crowley holding the First Blade over Dean, leverage is much better than gifting something if you’re the villain who wants a controlling interest in a main character >.>

* * *

> DEAN   
> Word around the campfire is, you let the snake into the garden, ruined it for all humanity.
> 
> GADREEL  
> I set them free. I loved humanity!

Pfft the best gifset is the one of this with “…platonically” under it :P

* * *

It’s also great that we have this line for comparison because you could argue Gadreel cared and felt like he did something good – though I think the previous line he had on it was that he was tricked so we have an ambiguity on this now of if he meant to do it or not or if this is just how he rationalised it to himself. But even just comparing his love of humanity to Cas’s even if Gadreel does feel it for real is such a difference. He’s off killing people and angels in human vessels, and Cas gets his army and sends some of them off to the hospital to heal humans. And of course with that we also get the very clear obvious example that Cas loves humanity as a textual thing in the same episode that it’s said…

Except, you know, that’s still not the full picture when it comes to Cas.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Well, you sure got got a funny way of showing it, asshat. Now, look, you tell me about this “getting back into heaven” crap and I’ll end this quick. Otherwise, you can sit here and rot in those chains forever. Up to you.

Dangit, I must be getting tired – I was about to prod that line as a “when did anyone ever tell Dean about the getting back to Heaven” plot but Cas did, off-screen, when repeating the conversation with Hannah, right before Sam says “Gadreel” and we drop into their conversation. 

Keep up, Lizzy. Like 90% of this episode is in the subtext or hidden behind secret walls they only stuck in there to show us that there were walls in the first place so we’d look for more everywhere else :P

* * *

> GADREEL  
> All your talk, all your bluster… you think you are invincible. The two of you against the world, right?

Oh holy crap how do I always time these rewatches to the worst possible places with current canon or watching with my mum? In this case, because we watched 5x16 over dinner… Superwiki’s down but when they’re in Sam’s “leaving for Stanford” Heaven, Dean accuses Sam that they were supposed to always be “the two of us against the world” and that Dean felt betrayed by how Sam wanted to get away so much.

This also is a good reminder of how Dean may have overreacted coming back from Purgatory to find Sam trying to live his own life, however irrationally. If Dean is pretty much triggered by Sam running away (oh god his face in the Flagstaff memory talking about when John came back…) then even when Sam quite rationally moves on with his life because Dean’s dead (Kevin argument aside, sorry Kev) (*ghost of Kevin muttering he didn’t die for this in the distance*) it could still hit Dean right where it hurts and he overreacts anyway. Seeing as we’re getting so close to demon!Dean and how that was used for Dean to unburden a lot of thoughts (… again… while trying to kill Sam with a hammer or spitting at him from the chair he’s tied to in the middle of a devil’s trap but shh these guys get like no *real* therapy) and some of that is the burden of literally raising Sam, and all his messed up issues about being brothers, then yeah, right while Dean’s on the descent freefall here is a wonderful time to have an association to that moment >.>

* * *

Also, lol Gadreel may be talking about Winchesters plural, but Dean literally IS invincible right now. Wheee dramatic irony.

* * *

GADREEL  
I have been in your brother’s body, Dean. He would not trade his life for yours.

DEAN  
Well, thanks for the rerun, pal. Sam’s already told me all that crap. Hell, he’s told me worse.

GADREEL  
He told you that he has always felt that way,

I don’t know if Metatron’s been using whatever powers of overseeing the narrative he has to tell Gadreel about this argument or if Gadreel’s REALLY dug into Sam’s head and found this out even when it was of no use to him. The fact that obviously the whole argument kicked off after Gadreel so he wasn’t present for Sam telling Dean this is something that is also there in the background of this exchange, but the dialogue seems to suggest Gadreel already knows they fought about this. Considering angels in Metatron’s general vicinity can say some pretty uncanny things, I wouldn’t put it past Metatron to influence this – IF we didn’t know he was distracted with Cas and not typing anything :P

* * *

> GADREEL  
> He told you that he has always felt that way, that he thinks you are just a scared little boy who’s afraid to be on his own because daddy never loved him enough? And he is right, isn’t he? Right to think you are a coward, a sad, clingy, needy…
> 
> DEAN  
> Keep it up!
> 
> GADREEL  
> Pathetic bottom-feeder who cannot even take care of himself, who would rather drag everyone through the mud than be alone, who would let everyone around him die!

I think at this point Gadreel is mostly getting into that thing where he’s really good at emotional intuition. And he’s spent a lot of time around Dean too as well as having access to Sam (And I did have a theory he sort of fell in love with Dean, as most things do >.>). Of course we know from Soulless Sam that Sam Unfiltered is much harsher than regular Sam, but there’s no reason he doesn’t think these things to himself but not share them because he wants to be kind. He CAN be very very sassy, after all. And he’s frequently impatient or frustrated with Dean’s behaviour but in a way where he’s obviously coming at it from a place of love… Gadreel can strip that all away because the worst thing for Dean is being told his family doesn’t love him. I mean, I just watched 5x16, I had to watch with my own eyes today Mary telling Dean he was a burden and she didn’t love him >.> So Gadreel accurately identifies exactly the sort of thing to tell Dean to  _ruin_  him.

The final comment also echoes the “I’m poison” sentiment from 9x10, so all in all, even though Gadreel was gone, he’s either accurately modelled the entire resulting argument based on his understanding of their characters from possession/watching them, or it’s Metatron’s typewriter at work again, giving him uncanny insight.

* * *

Dean is actually kind of more scary that even when he’s super angry at Gadreel and is about to stab him, he sees Gadreel’s face and has the presence of mind to stop mid-stab to try and re-evaluate what the situation is here. I mean literally MID STAB. He stopped inches from killing Gadreel. That’s some dedication to realising that’s the face of someone who killing him is the least worst thing you could do to him and he’s asking for it.

Dean is also very good at reading people.

* * *

Love the back and forth between Sam and Dean after the ad break, with Sam opening the motel room door to Dean walking into the grimy bathroom and putting his knife down, to Sam coming in raising his gun… He sees Cas’s phone and Dean puts his down. And then we see Sam pick Cas’s phone UP and see all the missed calls from Dean.

* * *

> METATRON  
> Easy there, tiger. I’m here to trade. 

I find that deeply unsettling but I guess he did just read ALL the books. That’s how Dean greets Sam in the pilot for the first time. Well, not the bit about trading, but… you know :P

Again, the concern links between Cas and Dean’s phones, but Metatron says “something of yours” to Sam; in the surface text TFW all belong together, in the subtext the connection between Cas and Dean is the more emotionally charged, though of course not meaning that Sam DOESN’T like Cas

The drama that follows is that this conversation is cut with Dean washing his face, having demon eyes in the shadows for a moment, and then touching the hungry Mark, and heading back off to possibly kill Gadreel while Sam is phoning him on his abandoned phone. Metatron says he’ll kill Cas if they don’t hand Gadreel back, so Dean’s actions here unknowingly threaten Cas by how far gone he is and gives him unintended consequences for succumbing to the darkness on Cas’s behalf which is also pretty chilling to go one full season further up the show.

Though Sam goes to make the trade off with Metatron, now Dean accidentally has a huge horrible moment where Cas’s fate is tied to his actions directly, and he almost fails (and Sam might not tell him how close it comes if since Gadreel is alive they can just focus on getting him to Metatron now). Obviously not a Destiel moment because yikes, but I can approve of the way this ties Cas and Dean together even in the very worst way, for the absolutely chilling “oh shit” of it all. (I still remember watching this episode for the first time, so vividly. I must have been on the edge of my seat all the way through)

* * *

Random points about this place they’ve got Gadreel: the aesthetic of red lights randomly catching stuff is very descent-y, since Dean’s final march towards death was repeatedly lit with red lights all over his face. Also behind Sam is angel warding spray-painted on the walls, the same one which once weakened Cas in 8x10, I think. Again, part of the story told only by the set, because I remember people posting annoyance that Gadreel was SO easy to beat up, and other suggesting Dean’s scary strength was entirely down to the Mark; actually, I guess they meet in the middle. Dean is stronger than normal, and Gadreel weaker than normal, and so Dean can hurt him this badly.

* * *

The way Dean sits on the floor like all the life has gone out of him, is one of the most heart-breaking moments in his descent because it really sinks in that yes, this is killing him. He could have blacked out a bit, or just immediately lost the high when he stopped trying to kill Gadreel (like how the next time he tries and then is stopped, it hurts him so badly he’s physically sick)… Metatron in 10x10 makes the point that the Mark is more angry at/hungry for angels, and takes a sort of grim pleasure in how it would hate him the most… Fair point when we actually meet Amara. At this point we really don’t have anything to compare to the way Dean gets completely overwhelmed like this, but the defeat and sickness in the way he sits… ugh.

Sam asks if he’s okay and Dean blows him off yet again, this time from beyond the point of being able to pretend it’s all fine and good, but again Sam doesn’t make a big deal, maybe this time because more urgent matters like saving Cas. Dean is sceptical they can trust Metatron to honour that, but agrees to give up Gadreel without any lengthy argument – I think his hesitance less about weighing up abandoning Cas, and more about not knowing if they were going to get burned on this trade AND lose Cas as a result.

* * *

I do love Metatron making himself late because he had to wait for the appropriate line to come in on – with this episode shunting back and forth between scenes using lines to carry over, it’s funny that this breaks to an awkward pause as Metatron waits for his cue but it doesn’t come as easily as some of the other transitions.

* * *

(Cuz he sucks)

* * *

> METATRON   
> Uh… Am I hitting my mark? Well, come on. Let’s go. I’m waiting.

He also mentioned spoilers earlier… This is the Metatron who meddled with the title card of this episode :P

* * *

(Cuz he’s great)

* * *

I like how Metatron just casually re-writes the story like, “okay, Metatrons can wipe out holy fire if they like, I’m in charge of the lore now” … being powered by the angel tablet is really annoying :P I feel like if he’d felt like helping properly in season 11, the fact he knows how to use god level artefacts to a high level of proficiency would have been reeeeally useful when they were pointlessly burning through Hands of God :P

* * *

(okay I’m just imagining cracky scenarios where all of TFW take their turn at the heavenly typewriter)

* * *

Anyway yay they get Cas back. Hello Cas. Please drift next to Dean like you’re supposed to :’)

Gadreel gives Sam a long look on the way out, and Sam – who was super mega angry with him, like, yesterday, suddenly looks a lot more conflicted; Dean told him that Gadreel wanted to die, and then he turns back and meets Sam’s eye – after this at least Sam and Cas are a little more sympathetic to him, and Cas will soon reach out to Gadreel after getting a fairer character reference from Sam. I think maybe this look is sort of ambiguous but just the fact he looks and Sam’s expression is conflicted rather than seething with hate as earlier, is all that’s needed to plant the idea Gadreel will be coming back from this. The “interrogation” revealed a lot about him even if it didn’t tell Sam and Dean much useful stuff about Metatron, we get to see him crack open and his vulnerabilities exposed; the idea of him being chained up forever getting to him, how he feels he’s on the right path, and so on, show us that he’s not cruel or cowardly, that there’s still a redeemable character inside him. Now Sam sort of sees that too… From this point on he’ll give him a fair chance when they encounter him.

* * *

Anyway, then the scene skips from evening to full dark – yet another time when they catch up the story off-screen and we join them again. Aside from anything else, this might be trying to loudly tell us the answer to all the times we complain about such and such never being told to another character because we never saw it happen on screen…

* * *

Oh gosh Dean vs Cas’s pop culture issues… :’) Like with the “honourable bar” thing it derails the dramatic plot conversation, and that immediately turns to Dean asking if Cas is okay (!!! My heart) and Cas shooting the question back at Dean. They’re both hiding something horrible from the other, but Cas’s one is being saved for 9x22 – hilarious because Dean just said “stairway to heaven” – does it count as a title drop when you’re 4 episodes away from it?

Anyway the shoulder pat/omg you have the Mark moment has been meta’d over and over. Cas has been given no suggestion that Dean has this, and even Metatron is surprised in 9x23 if I remember correctly. So Cas saying there’s something different is him actually reading Dean and sensing the Mark for himself.

Earlier Gabriel patted Cas’s other shoulder, now Dean leans awkwardly across to tap Cas’s right shoulder – idk what it means exactly, but that seemed somewhat weird, though it could have been to allow a better angle for Cas grabbing Dean’s arm to inspect the Mark for himself.

* * *

Sam pats Cas’s other arm.

Also yeah, Sam’s face watching all this, the “oh shit” moment when Cas can’t control how concerned he is about it and Sam is starting to realise that he can’t keep accepting it when Dean says he’s fine, and then Cas is like, “keep an eye on him”, looking REALLY worried.

Anyway it completely kills the friendly conversation between Dean and Cas, and all that tenderness disappears when Dean gets defensive. He too doesn’t want to know, really, that he’s made such a bad decision; last episode he was trying hard not to think about it, until Crowley egged him on into saying he’s all in, whatever the consequences. So now he starts feeling the consequences, after attacking Gadreel, and now Cas’s response is “Dammit, Dean”? He’s probably quietly freaking out about what he’s done to himself, masking it under all that anger.

* * *

Cas finally joins the “left alone standing in this exact set’s car park” squad, as Dean stomps off (transcript’s word, not mine :P) and gets in the car. Cas, who has been the focus of the episode, is left alone to think.

* * *

> METATRON  
> Didn’t quite turn out as I’d planned, but that is why we rewrite. That was God’s problem, you know… he published the first draft. You got to keep at it till you get all your ducks in a row.

As I was saying up the top about Kripke era – come rain or shine or writer’s strike or surprise hit character intro like Cas, you just keep on going even when the characters surprise you or the plot hits a huge unfortunate snag. Keep on trucking and pretend it’s all the original plan, and have several high up know-all characters TELL everyone it’s the original, long-foreseen plan even though looking back at Azazel’s plan in season 1 or 2 seems almost completely implausible as a practical method to enact it. Just… handwave it with scenes which make it make sense at least while you’re in the moment and thinking about current canon and the older stuff has faded from memory and maybe you can get away with it. Chuck does say he should have given some/all of the books a second run through when he’s confronted by the Winchesters for the first time :P

But Metatron is trying to redraft and redraft on the fly and come up with a version of the story that works, and… Listen, obviously you can never get an episode that un-fucks a season quite like 6x20, but I like to think this is a close second for the whole crazy angel war nonsense at the start, and how much easier it is to blame all the plot inconsistencies on Metatron :P As a first time viewer this season is weird and off-putting (I will always rue that I stopped watching while it was airing live between the weird dog episode and here), but once you have some retcon tools at your disposal and this message about making the season your own? Yep, Metatron is drafting away aaall season long :P

* * *

Gadreel realises he’s disposable:

> GADREEL  
> Was the Winchesters grabbing me part of your plan? 
> 
> METATRON  
> That was a surprise. But, hey, what writer doesn’t love a good twist? My job is to set up interesting characters and see where they lead me. The by-product of having well-drawn characters is…They may surprise you. But I know something they don’t know…the ending. How I get there doesn’t matter as long as everybody plays their part.

Or at least, Metatron may have bargained to get him back but it may well have just been because he took advantage of the situation where it would look cool to do a trade off, and that’s an excuse to chat to the main characters, and he totally planned to tag Cas and release him back into the wild ANYWAY so… There were a lot of ways this could have gone for Gadreel if Metatron wasn’t all about the Aesthetic™. I think he’s really just starting to realise that creative writing lessons are NOT good grounding for sensible battle plans, and that Metatron as a leader has some serious flaws, especially about the carelessness he treats his chess pieces with. Dismissing Gadreel’s concern, the phrase “how I get there doesn’t matter” stands out – though he promised Gadreel a starring role in the story, it’s also seeming likely that Metatron could easily see something horrible happening to Gadreel as a plot twist and just go with where the story takes him :P

(Phrasing not chosen lightly. First real Gadreel bitchface of the season initiated :P I missed that face.)

* * *

Anyway that last spoken line of the episode is the most threatening… but also the one that Metatron will come to regret. He’s trying to impose Destiny and a script on Cas, aka that angel who tore up the pages and is making it up as he goes, probably source of the most plot twists in Heaven per year of any angel :P

And, you know, he’s at his worst when he’s motivated by Dean, and now we’re on the final draft: the version that gets us to the end of the season is the one where Cas, horrified by finding the Mark of Cain in the last place he’d have wanted to see it, spends all night sewing his coat, and comes to the decision to do as Metatron wanted… but not to restore Heaven, but to save Dean. And Cas is terrible at sticking to the script when Dean’s involved :P

* * *

I may just watch the montage and sob to myself a bit because this is my Destiel Moment, or, one of the many I suffered while watching this for the first time. I wonder if I hadn’t known the song, I would have not reacted so strongly. But it’s absolutely the flawless use of the lyrics in this song that did the trick. I’m pretty sure everyone ever has written about them and they’re fairly self-explanatory when you listen to them on top of what’s happening, so…

* * *

Okay yeah that’s as horrible as I remember it being :P

* * *

Sam in the car is really looking at Dean in a way that suggests this is the first time he’s actually seen him in a few months/all season. Dean is all demon!Dean focus on angry-driving.

Cas looks miserable, and trashes the wall in his motel room, abandoning his one-man search for the resources of having an army (and stealing Bartholomew’s lair, I think it was implied? :P) and draws his sigil. Or, Gabriel’s, but he never used it for anything good, and, skewy motivations betrayed by the song lyrics crooning about loneliness and love while Cas is doing this, Cas is sort of doing it to unite and save Heaven so in the spirit of what it should have been used for. (Gabriel vs inaction is a huge theme after all, back in season 5)

* * *

Metatron writes Hannah’s pleased smile into his script, along with some really ego stroking prose about God smiling down on his creation. It’s all cheery sun rises in the morning nonsense, so the actual mood of that meeting with all the angels is completely suspect. Cas doesn’t want to be there at all, but Metatron is writing it as a victory for himself, and the adulation of the angels gathered, and “Cass” whoever that is meeting his flock and all, as if he should be pleased. He can’t write the emotions into real life, though, and Cas remains conflicted and miserable about having to do this, in this case the subtext being that the mood doesn’t fit Metatron’s script at all. On the other hand, the music he picked DOES; it’s literally telling us the sun won’t shine any more to the visuals of a sunrise and dawn. Is he really that oblivious to the subtext in his own story? Or did he pick it as a sort of victory music for HIMSELF to laugh at the angels who will all die as a result of his plan, and so on. The fact it is a love song crooning over Cas’s loneliness, directly putting “coat” over Cas and his coat, and linking Cas, Dean and the sun and love all in a few words and shots, is…

Well, whatever it is, I am literally never going to forgive you for doing this to me, Robbie Thompson.

 


	19. 9x19

I had Mel threatening me with being shoved in a woodchipper if I didn’t carry on this rewatch.

I also haven’t watched Fargo in years but it’s left lasting imprints on my psyche

* * *

We get the full Jody recap and some basic vampire lore. It’s got a little reminder of the time Dean WAS a vampire, if you look closely, which is especially relevant to his arc this season and honestly I don’t know why they didn’t harp on that more :P Okay, he was made a vampire entirely involuntarily as part of that stretch of season 6 which is all rape metaphor all the time. Dean and vampires is already a huge mess because of this and that thing where John used him as bait in 1x20, and other stuff, and vampire episodes are closely connected to Dean’s issues - scroll to the bottom of this page for a great series of posts on it that sadly only goes through season 2 but is where I got this thought from like… literally the week this episode originally aired since I had in fact reached fandom at that point and this was super relevant to the new episode: 

<http://sleepsintheimpala.tumblr.com/mymetamess> 

… anyway, the pattern keeps up. I know I and a couple of others have written about Dean being slam-dunked back into the closet around season 6-ish area (tbh, really just a Gamble era thing) and 6x05 either is something you can point to as a real inciting incident especially while Dean’s still desperately clinging to his year-long relationship with Lisa, or just a good sort of one episode summary of where he’s at… However it is, Boris the vampire rape-metaphors him and introduced it via creepy hitting on Dean, so all round is a terrible incident, that fits strongly with the themes of where Dean seems to be at around that time in relation to his sexuality… 

Of course, Benny, a vampire, is used to show Dean opening up to monsters as friends later in season 8 to go along with a much more positive, happy depiction of Dean, as, even with all the angst that inevitably comes, he seems a little better off emotionally, and his strong bond with Benny is used as one of the indicators of at that at the start of the season. (Along with plenty of paralleling in the vampire-related incidents around that - Edlund precludes the entire Carver era conclusion with the “god” vampire in 8x05 >.>) Dean, later with the Mark at a more advanced stage, blows off steam with killing vampires, and all the nuance in these cases disappears, and to me that feels like completing what is now almost a prophecy Gordon made back in 2x03 about becoming a killer (echoed by Cain in 9x11). I’ve been over this territory a lot, if you read everything I write meta on, but anyway, this is why it feels obvious to me to use the last MotW slot of the season for a vampire episode. Dean’s now spiralling down in his descent, and his personal-arc related monster is back…

I suppose this time, the lesson is not being able to let go of a child, with Dean as the Mom Vampire, and Sam as Alex (she acts as the neatest parallel to him in 11x12 as well, at least in the sense of reflecting his established character/history - he and Claire are really interesting for where Sam feels he might be going… I suppose if I ever scrape myself together long enough to get to the end of this, I’ll have to try and collect up and make sense of all of Sam’s random honesty hour moments to Claire, Charlie, Eileen and others about how he feels about hunting…) - anyway, this is the easiest surface level parallel of this episode as a whole: that Dean couldn’t let go, he struggled with turning Sam (into an angel, not a vampire) to preserve him, and it was his ultimate downfall. And as the title of the episode shows, the names are really important, as they have been all season since the Gadreel/Zeke thing.

Anyway I suppose I should actually watch this :P

* * *

We start with a whole lot of red exit signs, because this episode is super doomy, given where Dean is going:

* * *

> DEPUTY FRANK  
> Yeah, copy that, but the bullpen’s empty, and I got someone in holding.
> 
> RADIO  
> Sheriff’s heading to the station now. They won’t be alone long.

Oh, I love lines that are just meaningless chatter on a first watch. (This is also part 3 of just fawning all over Berens this season, bee tee dubs.) Of course the vamp has no idea that the Sheriff will be heading to the station, or that the Sheriff will be BE-heading him in the station before the title card. :P He’s accidentally completely right in a throwaway comment while he thinks he’s clearing the police station so he can get uninterrupted time to threaten Alex.

* * *

There’s also many times I wish the recap wasn’t there, because the first indication this is Jody territory in the episode is an external of the police station with Sioux Falls on it, and that establishing shot is also a warning that this is her jurisdiction… Just a quick blink and you miss it hint that Alex is not as unprotected as she seems…

A lot of the vamp episodes mess with typical cold open expectations; 2x03 especially uses the vampire as the victim and the hunter as the monster. Here, Alex seems like she’d be vulnerable and dead with vampires after her, but this totally isn’t the case with Jody around to save her, again making the vampire the one who bites the dust for the obligatory end of cold open blood splatter. Jody’s protection/right as a police officer-hunter is explored beautifully in this episode, such as her insistence she goes with Sam and Dean to save Alex later, as well as using her cabin for a safe house and so on.

* * *

> GIRL  
> A-are the others with you?
> 
> CODY  
> Everyone was off on a hunt when I’d realized you’d run away. Figured I’d do you and them a favor and come take care of this before they even know we’re gone.

Also with the inversions - the vampire talking about being “on a hunt” is a vague term that both hunters and the things they hunt can use about their activities. Alex has the whole vulnerable girl in a cold open thing going for her to have us on her side, but Cody’s language certainly COULD be blurred with being a hunter, especially as he’s clearly treating her as something that needed to be, well, hunted.

* * *

Anyway yay Jody, the real hero of this episode :D

* * *

Dean is much better at parking than in 9x08. Cue meta about his heterosexual parking to compare to how he “couldn’t even park straight” back then while in his sexuality crisis of the season. (Great parallel because Jody episode. No parallel parking though. The Impala can not be parallel parked. 9x06 proved this)

* * *

> JODY  
> Eh, only aches when it rains. How you boys been?
> 
> DEAN  
> Peachy.
> 
> SAM  
> Touch and go.
> 
> JODY  
> I know the feeling.

Did they wait for it to rain for this scene or was that just luck? :P

Making use of the rain around that line, anyway, is pretty neat for expressing Jody suffering with an unseen injury or… mark… that flares up circumstantially - and the fact that it’s clearly currently bothering her is also an omen for Dean.

This whole episode is an omen for Dean.

Anyway she asks how they are as one unit, but Sam and Dean have conflicting replies and emotional needs at this point and are working out of sync. Their fight is buried, but: Dean expresses he’s fine as Winchesters do (and of course being the one with something to hide, especially that he’s currently spiralling… Jody in 10x08 tells him he can talk to her about shit because it’s all on the other side of this, and again in 12x06… Dean does not seem to be good at making use of the resource of Jody’s shoulder, freely offered. Her shoulder is hurt though :P Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt her further by telling her the horror show of his life - the casual, fun fling of a friendship they have with her, in a way, of keeping the Big Plot Nonsense away from her, though she had directly got involved and helped them with it in season 7…) And Sam, the currently hurt one whose season is all coping and recovering and holding a justified stance in the argument (that is, when the argument is on track) gets to express dissent to Dean talking for them, assert himself as an individual AND be open about being currently hurt in a way Dean can’t be.

Interesting little exchange.

* * *

I love Jody keeping things she beheaded in the boot of her car.

* * *

Though.. she had to have a really good instinct to know that it was vampires since she jumped in on that conversation late. Does she habitually behead people?

* * *

Anyway Sam and Dean joke about her being all grown up - there’s a lot of instances of them JOKING together which I think has been taken as them being back in a good place, but is really just a thin layer of humour slapped on top of all the awful for the sake of working together.

> JODY  
> Total Jane Doe. She won’t even give me her name. Girl’s basically feral.

names are important - in this case, without one she is basically less than human in Jody’s language choices… Or dead, as “jane doe” is also used notoriously for unidentified corpses. Which ALSO foreshadows that she’s replacing a dead girl (the Vamp Mom’s baby girl)

* * *

Sam notices the marks on her neck, while Dean is just enjoying threatening her. He sees her as vamp adjacent (and the fact she’s marked by them though he hasn’t even seen it yet, is already symbolic of her connection to them, especially because it’s causing Dean to treat her as basically a monster or not on the side of hunters anyway. This is all ignoring that she ran away and was clearly trying to get AWAY from the vampires and NOT be like them. She is “marked” and because she snarks at them for being hunters, it draws the “us” or “them” lines immediately, so Dean moves into interrogation mode.

(And yeah the “mark” is in quotations because the parallel is obvious there - Dean thinks she’s become a monster or is less than human even before he turns into a demon, that mark is making him into something he doesn’t want to  be. He KNOWS it. He’s known it since he got it. Probably BEFORE he did. But now the consequences are hitting him and it’s terrifying and so he’s not giving her any benefit of the doubt because he wouldn’t give himself)

* * *

They learn what’s on the record about Annie and Dean’s response is just,

> DEAN  
> Eight years is a long time for a human to live with vampires without getting killed or turned.

His suspicion about her I think also comes from a feeling that if she IS still human she has to have been indoctrinated somehow just because how is she still alive - I don’t know if he suspected exactly that she was a lure, but I seem to remember he isn’t very surprised at this information either. This is before Sam points out she was being used to feed on, and of course back in 7x22 they had a girl who looked a LOT like Alex turn on them (hi Jenna from season 11 :P) - I said back in my 7x22 rewatch that this episode was doing right by this story of the girl, not least because it gives her much more time, but also it’s a much more nuanced exploration of her and why she’d act and feel how she does, and her choices are so important to the story, rather than the girl in 7x22 being a plot token. 

Anyway then Sam says that thing that’s relevant for, like, everything:

> SAM  
> Jody’s right. And she had scars on her neck, feeding scars. Uh…They’re layered, as if they’d been built on for years.

Which is a super dark metaphor for basically any sort of trauma you want to apply here. Especially as here I feel like there’s a lot of projecting going on - this was how Dean broke in hell, essentially, but with torture instead of feeding, and of course now he’s picking up where that left off and finally turning into a demon. We could say Dean’s trauma has been built on year after year… 

And then the chilling imagery of:

> DEAN  
> We’ve seen it before – vampires keeping people as pets, human feedbags. Sometimes these slaves…
> 
> SAM  
> Stay loyal to their captors.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah.
> 
> SAM  
> Right.

which might have them in sync again but for really chilling commentary on their loyalties. I don’t think OVERALL their relationship is THIS bad but it’s definitely a comparison they make as a worst case scenario, and honestly, the chill bliss of season 11 and 12 so far with no Giant Bro Drama has really taken the edge off my feelings of HOW bad it got in Carver era, when we had to suffer it week by week. 

Anyway. Using winsync to deliver this info is just… brr. This is the point in the story when they’re most tied to each other in this horrible way where the resurrection codependency problem has flared up the most and Sam’s next on the block with demon!Dean lurking. The threat that Sam would go dark was huge over the hiatus, because of how his season ends, with him sitting LITERALLY in the dark…

Actually, lemme just remind you of how we find him at the end of 9x06 -

* * *

since, well, I have the gif, it’s another Berens ep, and the foreshadowing in season 9 is just a thing of beauty.

Also, the “captors” thing reminds me that Berens’ other episode this season was Captives, which through every branch of the story stressed this theme, and of course included Sam and Dean’s own sense of being captive in the Bunker with each other. Sam is in a precarious position where he’s fallen out with Dean and honestly has a pretty fair grievance about the Gadreel thing, but is working with Dean anyway, living with him, making jokes with him, and completing his sentences. About loyalty to their captors.

Now of course I’m a total Dean!girl so I see this all as fairly metaphoric of where they’re at in the argument, that though Dean is in the wrong I still find him sympathetic and empathise with his actions (as much as I want to slap him upside the head and tell him to get himself together :P)…

The other side of this is what is buried so deep it’s barely whispered in the subtext a lot of the time, and you have to catch it by implication or in very rare special episodes like 9x07, is only suddenly thrown out into the main text in 10x03 where demon!Dean really lets Sam have it about feeling like HE has been shackled to HIM with the whole looking out for Sammy thing. He tells him that he quits on that job, and equates his sense of freedom to not having to worry about Sam. Obviously that’s all garbled through demon!Dean filters for what Dean may actually feel in a non-evil way, but it makes the point of how over the years it’s been so forced on Dean to save Sam that this metaphor works there too, of the scars building up and loyalty to what he feels has been a captive situation with having to look after Sam… 

I mean the real tragedy is how this is all such a mess that they BOTH have this horrible metaphor apply to them and they need to be freed from it - on both sides. Season 12 seems to be shaping up to a group effort, larger core family feeling (keeping Jody around in this discussion, great metaphor to that in 12x06 with the group exorcism), and I’m enjoying the dynamics so much more…

* * *

Oh wait and I haven’t even commented on the obligatory prison imagery - yes this is in a police station and all, but the interview room is given bars by the blinds -

it was in the earlier round of questioning too… I like how this episode is shot a lot. :D

Also this shot of Jody listening in at the door:

I love that it gives us this indication she is the POV (as much as there is one - the looking in through the windows makes it SO impersonal and I would write an essay on that, but it’s all gut feeling and I do not have a media studies degree despite the apparent dire need of one I have in my day to day life since fandom :P)… Jody is listening in and watching over this conversation, and this look shows her obviously ready to arbitrate or step in by putting the camera’s focus on her, like this fade from Winchesters to Jody, indicates that she is in control here.

* * *

> DEAN  
> And they didn’t love you. They loved your blood. They fed on you.
> 
> ALEX  
> I fed them. My choice. My brothers – they brought me food when I was hungry. So when they struck out on a hunt, I fed them. They’re my family.

Family don’t end in blood? Doesn’t start there either - especially not when they’re drinking your blood :P Idk, it feels like a subversion of this saying because it’s about family and blood. Sam and Dean keep using the wrong name for her, which makes her angry and even more uncooperative. If her name is like… a passcode to talk too her, they’re failing to gain entry by sticking to the name they THINK she should react to, trying to reason with the stolen child instead of the person Alex has become.

Alex stresses choice here, about choosing family, and again the parallels are all sorts of awful here because of the chosen family theme of the show, and how Sam and Dean choose each other, but from an outside POV that they have that Alex has been raised by vampires, they see the damage and toxic nature of this in a different way from her. She may have been running away but she needs, well, the rest of the events of the episode to see clearly and to choose a family that is good for her. It’s making the point it’s not EASY to break these bad family bonds, especially when they seem to be chosen (Dean is made to pick Sam many times over others - e.g. Death making him pick between Sam and Adam in 6x11, which I have recently rewatched so it’s on my mind :P But at the same time these choices are forced, and made out of a desperation where Dean is unable to lose Sam and fail him, so the choice is dubious and it plays into a much more complicated dynamic that needs change and repair…) 

* * *

Sam carries on being a BIT more sympathetic. They’re SORT of playing good cop bad cop but both with being hunters and Alex isn’t going to get on with that however they approach it. 

They also talk about her decision to run away:

> DEAN  
> And how do you think that decision is gonna sit with the rest of the nest? One of them already pursued you. You think when the rest of them find out that you left that they’re just gonna shrug and cut their losses?
> 
> SAM  
> You lived with them for years. They’ve tasted your blood. They have your scent down cold. I mean, how far can you run and for how long?
> 
> DEAN  
> You didn’t think this out, did you? What would happen, who might get hurt – your, uh, “brother,” for one.

which is REALLY accusatory there that she got Cody killed and putting all the blame on her actions…

(Honestly the fact this episode doesn’t start (after the cold open) with cutesy Winchesters in the Bunker getting the call from Jody while living a slice of life, really isolates us from them. This episode is already really making them look bad, Jody look good, and definitely our POV player)

> DEAN  
> Because of a choice you made. These are the consequences.

Dean, currently wandering around with the Mark, having made a choice that will get a lot of people hurt and killed, including, nearly his brother too…

* * *

Anyway this escalation of her teenage rebellious escape attempt into her family being killed, her being blamed, and Vamp Momma as a threat who might kill her for it, as Alex thinks, is what convinces Alex to put herself in their care. As far as I remember in this episode she never reaches out to the vampires and in a LOT of stories like this I know the victim often has a lapse and calls the monsters down on them. As far as I recall, a few clues about where she might have gone and her scent are enough to get Alex in trouble, and she genuinely does put her trust in the authorities - both hunters and cop - from this point. Though she’s not happy about it, she’s not punished more than this emotional blame for her attachment to the vampires? I might be wrong about that but I remember a lasting fondness for this episode’s treatment of Alex as a victim. Sam and especially Dean are blame-y and judge-y but Jody (our sympathetic character here) wants to reach out and save Alex for her own sake. And is rewarded for that.

(Thinking of blame, though… Don’t get me into her being turned into a vampire as a rite of, like, puberty or womanhood or whatever because it’s super weird but this is sort of what’s going on with Alex’s comment that it was “time” she left as her normal growth was about to be interrupted - Vamp Mom’s plan is to FREEZE Alex in this seemingly virginial-but-enticing adolescence in this fucked up backwards rite of passage, out of twisted love for her/her dead daughter but also it conveniently keeps her as the perfect honeytrap forever… Saving her allows Alex to mature normally and have control of her body, but all the stuff relating to her time as a lure is laden with the potential for blame about how her body was used - which 11x12 was about… There’s a whole mess of stuff there >.>)

* * *

> DEAN  
> Mills, you okay?
> 
> JODY  
> No wonder she didn’t thank me. That creep was her brother.

Again with the really impersonal - “Mills”… Dean knows Jody better than that but RIGHT NOW this is the story that is being told, and the feel of the episode that’s coming across.

After Jody says the thing about “brother” we get the obligatory reaction shot from a Winchester to the word - in this case Dean’s gruff angry facade momentarily cracking and sparing a moment to think about dead brothers. He’s not ALL  gone yet, although we’re now very very few episodes from Dean losing that core sense of self that is his care for Sam…

* * *

(This isolated feeling from Dean is also good with us getting closer to that - keeping him at arm’s length to emphasise the coming loss of self, because we’re being cut off from him, and stuff like this shows DEAN is being cut off from his true self to, already.)

(Throwing in a reminder we’re 3 episodes from Dean yelling at Sam that their relationship is a dictatorship)

* * *

7 minutes in and Jody is already getting close to the name thing by picking at what’s so weird about it. I know for storytelling purposes it’s important to ask that question early, but I like that it’s ALL Jody getting invested in this and trying to work out how to understand Alex

* * *

Sam and Dean take the clue of where to go next and leave Jody with “babysitting” duty, though it’s already apparent Jody is invested.

* * *

I have so many questions:

The barbershop next door and this thing wedged on the other side of the bus terminal - I guess maybe the terminal is a tunnel between shops to a place out back where the buses come in if I had to make up a reason for this. But yeah, the OPEN sign, the chairs, the wedding dress? The poster that the only word I can make out is the middle one - “suede”… What IS that shop? There’s no other camera angle on it and I guess it was made up by the set department…

WHY a wedding dress though? THAT sticks out. Alex isn’t being forced into any marriage-equivalent situation, nor are any of the other characters… It’s a very odd thing but they captured it in this shot >.> I need back up.

- 

[@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) seemed totally chill with the concept and assured me that this is a Thing that cleaners do to show off their competence… I guess the thing is now just that they chose to display this so obviously in the scene.

I’m going to go for retro DeanCas subtext and suggest the cleaner and launderette from 9x01 are linked except dry cleaners are an upgrade from launderettes in terms of self service vs someone doing it for you and them doing fancy stuff like wedding dresses… Like Cas had an upgrade from human (clearly linked to the launderette scene as that was where he accepted a lot of human limitations finally) but anyway, look, a wedding dress! Cas is gonna get married!

[disclaimer: I vaguely remember how this season ends]

* * *

For some reason all I take away from the rest of this scene is trying to make vampire hissing noises and realising it’s harder than it looks to do with your mouth open, bearing your teeth, without making phlemgy noises.

* * *

Jody’s cabin in the woods objectively looks creepy because cabins in woods are creepy as fuck, and the fact that it’s Jody’s doesn’t really do anything to smooth that over…

* * *

She does not do much to reassure Alex by giving her the old horror movie rundown on the setting:

> JODY  
> F.Y.I. – The woods around here – really easy to get lost in if you don’t know your way around. Me – I know them like the back of my hand. 
> 
> ALEX  
> I got it. “Don’t try running. You won’t get far”. 

* * *

> ALEX  
> Oh. Dead. 
> 
> JODY [taking the picture back]  
> You know, there are about a thousand more polite ways you could say that. I’ll give you a pass on account of the whole raised-by-monsters thing.

Alex is obviously trying to get a rise out of Jody – maybe just testing the limits of this semi-captivity she’s in with her and seeing what sort of prison guard she’s ended up with. Jody gets in this barb despite trying to be high-minded (because Alex dragged her family into it) and the “raised-by-monsters thing” emphasises again the line between human and monster that Alex is wavering in between… By the definitions OTHER people put on her, not so much what she’s doing aside from being sarcastic.

* * *

I’m half sure the exterior shot for the vamp house was Cain’s AGAIN but from a different side. The interior is probably any old set. I’ve talked a lot about how the state of Sam’s soul and how in peril it is is almost a direct correlation to run down shacks with boarded up windows. This is a rare case where “Blackout windows” and the whole state of the decrepit house refers to Dean. Because windows are the eyes to the soul or something, and they’re all blacked out. Wonder what that means.

* * *

(I have a post on that in my queue, another relic of season 9 meta that I stumbled on and was awed about at the time)

* * *

  


> DEAN  
> Hey! Hey, you need a hand with that?

This is objectively one of the worst things Dean’s ever said :P

I remember meta about his flippancy about it being a sign of his decaying soul (everything is) but honestly I think he’d say it whatever was going on :P

Anyway I love the dedication to Fargo references in this show.

* * *

Remember that time Sam knocked a vampire out with a shovel?

(Teamwork!)

* * *

> SAM  
> Ralph Hedges. Stacy Kepler. Any reason you targeted them? 
> 
> DALE  
> Yeah. Hunger.

With the threat of the hunger of the Mark as the big bad in season 10, this is pretty ominous. Vampires being used as mirrors to Dean as well… Ironically he blows off steam killing them in order to feed that hunger and stop it being dangerous to random humans. (The main example of this I can think of… is from 10x19. Hi Berens :P)

* * *

Anyway Dean gets back to torturing, no hesitation. I’ve now left this rewatch too long to remember if this is the first time he gets into it since getting the Mark or what, but this is another neon sign that he’s not okay.

* * *

I’ve seen a lot of meta about the bit about siblings here –

> DALE  
> Well, all of us but little sis. She was, uh, “too good to turn”. Mama couldn’t bring herself to, no matter what we said, no matter how bad Alexis got.
> 
> DEAN  
> Bad? 
> 
> DALE  
> Let me guess. You never had a teenage sister. Dragging her heels, whining, near constant, about everything, but more and more about the blood, like she’s somehow above it, like she’s better than us ‘cause she don’t feed on people.

Again the suggestion that a little sibling is a burden. Ironically Dean had it the other way around that Sam had a problem WITH drinking blood. Monsters tend to work in reverse to the Winchesters so that’s no surprise… It also suggests favouritism between siblings and the parent; I think Sam and Dean both relate to that, thinking John may have liked the other better for different reasons, even if it involved a lot of projecting. I’m getting pretty sleepy to remember what the meta I’ve read about it suggested though >.>

The “Bad” thing is also interesting too – Dean seems to be thinking it means she’s evil because he’s determinedly looking for signs of that still because they don’t trust her (and so he falls completely for the READING of the story that Alex as a lure was evil. This is about INTERPRETATION though – Dale tells the truth of events but the bias on the reading determines if she’s evil or a victim.)

Anyway Dale just found her annoying. :P

* * *

> DALE  
> Her moping? That teenage crisis-of-conscience crap? It’s annoying as hell, but it’s just an act. When the chips are down, she’ll always choose us over humans.

That confidence that she’ll choose family – taking and corrupting the iconic line about it

Also talk about a Cas mirror for picking humans - which Alex does - and remembering 9x22 and the whole “humanity” thing is waiting in the wings for Cas…

* * *

> MAN  
> Come on, sweetie. Aren’t you gonna give me a name? 
> 
> ALEX  
> It’s…Ann.

That’s the 3rd name she uses so far (And Dale used “Alexis” for us, so Bingo! I guess) – a corruption on her original name – of the innocent little Annie who genuinely WAS, turned into the vampire lure. Like, no wonder she doesn’t want to use Annie again after reconnecting with her past. It’s not like LotR with Frodo calling Gollum “Smeagol” and luring out the old identity that could be reasoned with to a degree until things went really south… Alex has every right to keep the name she had been given by the vampires that still carries less baggage than this, especially as it seems to be more connected to her identity as herself (the “crisis of conscience” self that rebels) while she’s constructed a persona under “Ann” who is exactly what she wants to leave behind…

* * *

Then, the obvious demonstration of the story being wrong:

> DALE  
> Best a vamp could ask for. And you better believe you don’t get that good at it unless you enjoy it. In her own sweet way…Girl’s as bloodthirsty as any vampire. 
> 
> SAM [suddenly realizing]  
> Jody.

(Cut to Jody returning with firewood, finding Alex missing, a whole little horror movie tension building moment… aaaaand Alex is passed out on the bed, one sleepy, harmless teenager)

* * *

She also shows a sign of humanity:

> ALEX  
> Sheriff. My grandma?
> 
> JODY  
> I’m so sorry.
> 
> ALEX  
> No, it’s – it’s fine. I figured – it’s been years, and she was old.

She tries to shrug it off, but the fact she asked at all is a great sign that she’s not a lost cause, because she’s got concern about another human being…

* * *

 Dean kills Dale just because they’re done with him – it’s framed as a quick decision where Sam leaves, and though Dale is subdued and tied up, Dean goes back to kill him. It might not seem like much when they’re in a rush and Jody is in danger and these vampires are blatantly evil and by the Winchesters’ standards the type of monster they have a right to kill without hesitation, unlike some of the sympathetic vamps they’re encountered who should give them pause. BUT the way this all goes down, it leaves Dean making a snap decision that’s bloodthirsty and involves killing, right at the point of the story when every single kill he makes, from the moment he gets the Mark, is weighted with a huge amount to say about his current arc and how he’s doing. The kill at the end is a much bigger sign of him being Not Okay, but, yeah, this isn’t a good thing either, despite how it may seem like part of their regular job. Later in the episode his bloodthirsty choice turns the vampires against them even more than they’d normally react to hunters, although I guess it takes the heat off Alex for getting so many of the family killed. :P

* * *

I always hate to think about poor Jody spending a night sleeping on the cold forest floor. I like to think the vamps came at like, 4am, and the Impala gets there maybe like 6 or something.

* * *

Dean comes rushing in to save Jody – Sam too but we see the shot of Dean rushing towards her and his dialogue full of concern, so it sort of makes him more in the focus there.

It seems sort of normal until –

> DEAN  
> You think they went back to the nest?
> 
> SAM  
> Of course they did. Why wouldn’t they? Question is – what are they gonna do when they find their brother dead? 

Oops.

* * *

They try to tell Jody not to come out of honest concern that she’s hurt, but Jody has her own priorities that she’d had Alex in her care. When Dean tries to convince her Alex is evil, Jody has the alternative reading:

> JODY  
> I don’t care. Whatever she did, she did because they made her. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, and that’s a reason? 
> 
> JODY  
> She’s a kid!

She has a much better idea of consent and coercion, and the most tragic part is this –

> DEAN  
> Yeah, a kid who’s been playing vampire murder since before she was in braces. 
> 
> SAM  
> Jody, he’s right. A-at best her loyalties are…Screwed. 
> 
> DEAN  
> And how do you even know she wants to be saved? 

DEAN YOU DESERVE TO BE SAVED

But yeah, Dean’s sense of self was ripped from him when he was 4 years old and he was set on the path of violence and revenge and hunting things. (Also saving people but that’s all shelved this year >.>) He has no point of reference for it NOT being weird to be screwed up by this sort of life since before you were in braces and for it to affect your adult self. He thinks he’s a killer right now – that he’s been shaped into one and that’s all he’ll be and he’s embracing it… So learning “Annie” was lost years ago just makes him all the more convinced she’s evil and unredeemable and NOT innocent of who she is.

Jody, despite missing the huge metaphor of Dean’s life or Sam’s issues with loyalties being screwed (see also: slaves and captors discussion earlier) emphatically declares that childhood is innocence no matter what happens in it and that Alex has a chance to be good because she was used and turned into what she was by the vampires…

> SAM  
> What is this even really about? You barely know the girl. 
> 
> JODY [glares at the boys and moves to the car]  
> I’m coming. And if either one of you lays so much as a hand on Alex…You’ll have to go through me.

And Sam thinks Jody is being WEIRD about it – he’s following along with Dean a bit too much, and I can imagine Sam fans may have been wanky about this because Sam is normally more sympathetic. In this case he’s trying to understand Jody, but he’s essentially still in the same boat as Dean, not able to understand someone’s violent past from their redeemable present, and I quite like the way this story has him swept in Dean’s wake, following along (to a point) because the darkness affects both of them, just Dean more and this is a point of the story pushing BOTH of them deeper… I don’t think the wake up call REALLY comes until 11x01 when Sam starts making alarmed noises about how far they go and starts trying a few solutions for better ways…

* * *

Alex wakes up on what is clearly her bed

It has flowery covers and yet it very obviously in a gross vampire basement in all other respects. She’s probably slept her basically all her life that she remembers clearly. This is her idea of home. It also, not uncoincidentally, looks a LOT like a messed up version of Dean’s room in the Bunker. No actual private space – a sort of curtain around it. The same concrete décor, and a little shelf behind the bed, with books and candles on it… Garbage everywhere… Vampires upstairs… Nice.

* * *

> MOMA  
> Baby, why did you do it? Why did you run from us? 
> 
> ALEX  
> I love you, mama. I do. I just – I couldn’t take it anymore. The blood and the death, the sounds of their screams. I just… I can’t do it anymore. And the way I feel afterwards, the guilt…I’d rather die than feel that way again.

“This is better… it’s making me into something I don’t want to be”

(I actually haven’t seen 9x23 in years but I think that’s the line >.> fairly traumatising episode tbh :P)

* * *

> MOMA  
> It’s my fault. 
> 
> ALEX  
> What? 
> 
> MOMA  
> All of it. This is my fault. I should’ve turned you years ago.

This also feels pretty ominous but I can’t put my finger on why. Honestly my best bet is Crowley to Dean – all the grief he’s ever got from him, and making him into demon!Dean seems at first to suggest he finally has a Winchester who’s compliant to him…

* * *

The vamp nest in daylight has a sheep carrying truck and an old school bus outside it. Humans as livestock and Alex’s lost childhood? Who even knows :P Anyway they give Jody the briefing like she’s a soldier, but with a lack of trust about dealing with Alex.

* * *

> MOMA  
> It was so selfish. I wanted to watch you grow up. I kept putting it off. Don’t you see? These things you’ve been feeling – all the guilt and suffering – those are human feelings. It ain’t too late. I can take the pain away. And then we can stay together, as a family. Like none of this ever happened. Wouldn’t you like that?

“human feelings” immediately hits me with Cas in 10x01 talking about “human things” – I guess this describes a crossroads they all come to. Cas, struggling between being an angel and human, ends this season on “I just want to be an angel” which suggests he doesn’t want to feel, or care, as much as he does. Though it sounded like that was a declaration of intent over the hiatus, when we catch up to him he’s actually moping in bed wallowing in the pain – maybe unable to escape it because of being sick.

Likewise, I have a post waiting in my drafts to reblog for 9x23 comparing Dean telling soulless!Sam that being human is suffering and if he died Sam was supposed to sit in a dark room and suffer about it… With guess what screencap placed under it? :P (Hint: it’s Sam sitting in a dark room suffering because Dean is dead)

I think they all have their humanity in question at this point – Sam doesn’t lose it in any magical way, but his actions as a result of all this are called into question as season 10 starts and ends with Sam taking really extreme actions with consequences in order to save Dean.

Anyway “Moma” is of course meant to be completely wrong (see also: Dean talking about suffering and being human in 6x09) and of course feeling human things is the most important thing. It’s the core of the entire show – humanity. This season is all about humanity and how important it is and of course showing Dean in a state of losing it to emphasise just how important it really is. Alex as a mirror character to him is threatened with losing it – shutting off all those emotions that mommy vamp thinks are too horrible to deal with… But what would be left behind is monstrous by this show’s definitions, and that’s exactly what’s about to happen to Dean.

And of course, Alex is saved by someone who wants to be her family and to care for her…

The blood cure for vampires is VERY similar for demons, and I suspect probably influenced the original idea – 8x18 featured the blood cure, shortly before 8x22 showed the demon one.

* * *

Oh there’s a really weird room here in the vampire’s garbage-filled house. Most of the rooms fit the trash everywhere, blackout windows aesthetic but one room Dean looks in has all these fancy and useless lace curtains over the gaps between the boards that the light is shining through. Not so obvious in the still but it seems like real beams of light effects.

I’m reminded of Cas’s phone background (established in 9x18 using images from 9x03, and confirmed he still uses it several phone models later in 12x09)… At the very least it’s a sign of hope – that Dean can be saved, that there’s still some light in his soul even when it seems at its darkest… or tbh we’ve had white lace already this episode with that wedding dress. Now Dean’s associated with a RIDICULOUS surplus of white lace which can only be here because Wanek or someone wanted to show this because it’s A: not practical, B: not very vampire-y and C: really weird even for a trashy house like this. Also they look clean and white and nice! So yeah Dean’s gonna get maaarried.

Might be because Crowley’s got an eye to have a consort though

* * *

> JODY  
> We got to go! What did they do to you?
> 
> ALEX  
> I’m sorry, Jody. I made my choice.

BAD CHOICE IS NO CHOICE *wanders through the show banging a saucepan with a spoon*

I mean that’s the moral of this story when it comes to saving Alex, but I mean, there are sOME wider applications here.

* * *

> CONNOR  
> Hell of a sight to come home to… Brother lying dead on the floor.
> 
> No idea it was a Winchester that had done it. 

Berens really starts off his first season on the show interested in the sort of legacy/mythical power of a name with a story to it – mostly through Cas, and how the angels relate to him, but it turns out these vampires know who the Winchesters are, and somehow or other worked it out after they captured them too (I doubt Sam and Dean go around saying, hey, I’m Dean Winchester, this is my brother Sam…) – maybe it’s their scent. Maybe vampires have a rumour mill of their own (demon bathroom walls too this season) and warn each other what to look out for if they have Winchesters on their case… Whatever it is, their names are known and they’re legendary enough figures the vampires know exactly how to taunt them.

Names are important.

* * *

Also that “hell of a sight to come home to – brother lying dead on the floor” thing – well that’s what Sam does in 9x23 when he comes rushing in to save Dean from Metatron…

> CONNOR  
> Which one of you took off my brother’s head?! Was it you? Was it him? Pretty fitting – brother for a brother.

The “brother for a brother” thing sounds an awful lot like passing on a brother-killing curse between people…

* * *

I have the TV instead of my second monitor to watch this so I’m less good at looking than normal, but I think this scene just has some ominous shots of Dean lying still on the floor. I can’t remember if it was confirmed he woke up and was listening to all this or not, and he just gets up at some point but the way he’s put in the front of the frame at several points, even blurry, makes it very ominous because he’s just lying there “unconscious” – I feel like he hasn’t actually slept since he got the Mark and knocking him out doesn’t do much good, really, but we don’t know that yet, so it’s harder to guess how he was doing at the time this aired… However now I’m convinced he listened in on this whole thing, and was being pretty cold and tactical about when he should jump in – even if it meant leaving Sam to get roughed up and even bled out a bit first. (In 4x19 Sam is also left to bleed out while Dean is fighting the ghouls and it’s very tense but Dean honestly want to get to him to save him – I have seen these moments paralleled anyway)

* * *

> MOMA  
> Hey. Don’t be bothering my girl. She’s going through something, a process. 
> 
> JODY  
> What did you do to her?
> 
> MOMA  
> Fed her my blood. She’s on her way now. All that’s left is to feed.

Like I said, weirdass womanhood rituals going on here. First blood and all that, but instead of bleeding it herself, Alex takes it from another woman… (yeah I know Alex is older than this but… metaphors… Especially as Moma goes on to imply Jody is menopausal and is obviously barren herself either because vampire or because she was also menopausal when she was turned so could never even hope to have a replacement baby of her own – anyway Alex is being forced to take blood from both these mother figures, representing the end of her growth and stunting her before she can become a real adult…)

* * *

> ALEX  
> Please, mama. Let her go. I already drank from you. Let her go. 
> 
> MOMA  
> Made an impression on my girl, I see. Baby, this is the human half of you talking. After the change, this human – she ain’t nothing to you.

At this point I’m pretty much just quoting ominous lines to point at them

I like the “Human half” – I was talking a little way up about how Dean had some good left in him, and in a way the real metaphor for Dean is that he doesn’t fully “become” demon!Dean Cain 2.0 until he kills Sam – like Alex won’t be fully turned until she drinks from Jody. So demon!Dean still has a whole “human half” if you look at it that way, that there’s a final act of turning.

(Which was also compared in 10x03 to Soulless!Sam killing Bobby to “scar his vessel” too much for a soul to go back in it – to kill the human part of himself that could have remained. I have just read an essay about souls in supernatural and there’s a lot of conflicting philosophy bouncing around in my head so I’d better leave off here… Maybe by 10x03 I’ll have a clearer sense of what I’m thinking about this :P Also in 10x03 Dean is on a sliding scale of human to demon by how much blood is in him…)

* * *

> MOMA  
> I have fed her, clothed her, loved her going on nine years. You think motherhood’s just about blood? You don’t know the first thing about it. 
> 
> JODY  
> Maybe not, but I know what it isn’t. And it ain’t about forcing her to be like you the second she becomes inconvenient.

Motherhood does not get a whole lot of exploration in this show for obvious reasons, since Jody is one of the only mother characters to really survive like this and open us up to plots like this. And even taking in Alex and then Claire, her stories haven’t REALLY been strongly about motherhood outside of this episode, because she’s a fascinating, complex and interesting character with a ton of crap going on in her life :P

Anyway it’s a “family don’t end in blood” type message but again twisted and messed up as it’s coming from the villain. Honestly if you flip it around and make Moma into Bobby’s perspective but not evil, that’s kind of a lot of stuff he said about Sam and Dean in 7x10, in the best episode about FATHERHOOD in the show. And of course he’s the originator of the “family don’t end in blood” line.

Jody, though, is continually watching out for coercion and lack of choice (which is probably why Dean is banned by the plot from talking to her about his problems for, what, 3-4 seasons now of her offering, because as soon as he delves into it a lot of truths that Jody’s eye for this can pick out will suddenly be really uncomfortable for Dean).

This is also – from Jody – a good line addressing John’s parenting, especially looking at it like Dean was forcibly turned into John by subliminal emotional coercion… demon!Dean reminds us of 3x10 constantly because of how up to this point it’s the only exploration of what that would REALLY be for Dean, and that ended up with the “my father was an obsessed bastard” speech about everything he put on Dean. Now we’re back in this territory, we have this mirrored example of monstrous motherhood instead, but still mirroring where Dean’s going to end up…

* * *

Oh yeah there Dean goes with immediately being prepared for the fight, having been holding a syringe of dead man’s blood ready for the instant a vampire touches him. Beautiful choreography of the vampire grabbing his hair and him lunging up at it in one fluid movement but kinda sad there’s not a longer hair-pulling moment :P heh.

* * *

> JODY  
> Alex! Was that her name? You named her after someone. Was it your daughter? I couldn’t figure out why you changed her name. I thought maybe you were ashamed of your theft, but you have no shame. You said that I was using her to fill a hole in my life, and you’re right. I am. You are, too.

Just Jody nailing projection perfectly. See above: can’t talk to Dean about his shit :P

* * *

Meanwhile: Dean is stronger than a vampire and does the whole “Look at me, bitch!” thing when he kills it, which is… maaaybe a sign he’s not doing too well. I’m pretty sure we’ve lost him at this point in the story (all the stuff that keeps him distanced from being the emotional POV here especially) and we’re essentially one episode away from him being TRULY consumed by the darkness after he kills Abaddon

* * *

I guess there’s another episode in between though :P

* * *

He goes to help Sam and has a completely pointless bit of snark about their fight:

> DEAN  
> Yeah, I know. You wouldn’t have done the same for me.

Dean still kinda sees killing monsters as saving Sam (messing up the line between saving people hunting things) and he’s still harping on that fight. 

I’m guessing the words have got all twisted up and poisonous inside him along with the literal darkness doing this to him… Not a good time to have a serious argument while one of you is infected with a brother-killing curse that will feed off these dark feelings :P I think his descent is being accelerated by that – which also explains how it was much slower in season 10, to me, because Sam rescinds this statement while Dean is dying, and though they’re still completely messed up by the time they get back on track a little with doing MotW and living their lives, the fighting is replaced by Sam trying to help Dean… But then towards the end of the season when things are bad between them again because of the Book of the Damned nonsense, and then Charlie, Dean immediately and dramatically drops again.

* * *

Meanwhile: Alex saves Jody by rebelling against her old family and picking a new one.

> JODY [to ALEX]  
> Don’t watch this, sweetheart.

I just love Jody so much.

* * *

“It looks like you were enjoying it, maybe too much…” Was I following a thread of Sam really really not seeing the warning signs until it was far too late? Dean brushes it off as part of the job – pretending it’s business as usual with the one liners, pride in what they do… You can imagine him on a good day seeming to act similarly, but Sam’s definitely picked up on the difference. I remember when I got to fandom reading something I think adjacent to this episode about Dean killing that vampire in 2x03 with the saw as one of the most brutal kills he ever made on the show… Again, vampires, again being used to show that something’s seriously wrong with him, and Sam being super alarmed to witness it. Of course this time Dean busted out some superhuman moves and strength to finish the fight so even ignoring his personality change, Sam should be worried :P

* * *

Jody interrupts this argument, which is always a bad sign when characters aren’t allowed to get to the end of discussions where something might have actually come of it. Sam was genuinely starting to dig into how Dean feels and has been acting and his VERY NEXT QUESTION could have got him the sort of answer he needed to be Truly Concerned about Dean, but nah. Here she is :P

* * *

Jody shifts the need to apologise back to herself, after Sam and Dean try to tell her she was right about Alex, which I think is Jody now too deep in her own confused feelings about wanting to keep Alex to really think straight about it. Moma did kind of get to her, but we’ll see when she goes to talk to Alex that it was in a good way where Jody’s even more clear and careful about boundaries and suggesting what Alex should do next than she would have been even as her normal caring self who wouldn’t exactly have been un-equipped to have this conversation… Anywho here with the Winchesters it kinda sucks that she exonerates them for their opinion of Alex – which while it was founded in experience, lacked the usual empathy even Sam at least should normally have for a victim. Jody’s feelings saved Alex’s life and she’s still apologising for being messed up about it >.>

* * *

Then aahahahaha oh my god Berens you fucker:

> JODY  
> Feelings I’ve been trying to bury for years, you know, buried it under work, religion…even dating. We know how that worked out.

*cut to a shot of Dean looking horrified/amused* Yeah, that’s Crowley they’re talking about and that’s Dean reacting to the thought of dating Crowley to bury feelings that have been sat on for years. I mean. Wow.

I knew Berens shipped Drowley like nobody’s business but I’m still finding nonsense little gems down in this part of the show which we couldn’t have seen coming at this time – even with people seeing a LOT of what came next :P

* * *

Anyway Jody says she’s going to address all her sad feelings head on because she is a well-adjusted character when it comes down to it and certainly in comparison to the Winchesters. Terrible example set in front of them :P they might actually learn to talk about their feelings!

/sarcasm directed at Carver era Sam n Dean from the safe perch of Dabb era

* * *

Oh god thinking of Dabb era remember how he nearly was a showrunner on something else like, next episode? Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiikes.

* * *

Anyway Alex says thank you very politely for Jody offering her something to eat, after she shrugged off Jody making her a sandwich earlier, so her return to humanity is marked not just by the cure but by showing her behaviour changing too. Now the threat of the vampires is all gone and she’s chosen humanity, she can begin to act like it too (after all of Jody’s comments about her being feral earlier)

The episode ends on a final gesture of empathy from Alex, which I guess is the biggest sign of humanity, and finally links them together in a way where from those 2 words you know they can try to build their family together:

> JODY  
> You don’t have to explain. I know. Whatever you want from me, I’ll give it. If you want, I’m here. But what you’ve been through the last 48 alone, losing your entire family, everything you’ve ever known or loved – no one can understand that.
> 
> ALEX  
> You can.


	20. 9x20

##  **9x20 rewatch**

[@justanotheridijiton](https://tmblr.co/msbbZom6stVUaSwCo2j0eeQ) sent me a reminder that there are at least some small ways this isn’t as terrible as it could be, I think:

([http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Supernatural/Supernatural_9x20_-_Bloodlines.pdf](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fleethomson.myzen.co.uk%2FSupernatural%2FSupernatural_9x20_-_Bloodlines.pdf&t=ODNmNDNlMjRjYzJjNmMxM2E4NjMzZGMxMWE5ZmVjNzIyOTIyNWE1NSxtWU9qeE5TMg%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F157108091403%2F9x20-rewatch-justanotheridijiton-sent-me-a&m=1))  

Of course Mel could have just been tormenting me by making me read the whole script right after I watched this..

There’s no recap on this, and we jump right in with jazzy music and a city skyline. 

I think one thing that was interesting about this was that with the right premise, this could have been a pretty great way to branch off the show, by taking it into the city as a permanent location, since the source material is very very rural. Along the way in this rewatch (and bearing in mind that this episode was eventually coming) I’ve talked about how Taxi Driver and 8x15, among others but mostly Buckleming, fuck up the show’s aesthetic by going inner city or delving into settled subcultures of monster stuff or just generally bringing in an urban fantasy slant to what is basically a cowboys vs monsters show. It really doesn’t fit :P This could have been a fascinating way to explore how to make the same aesthetic FIT. But as I mentioned, the above episodes plus years of drifting since like, season THREE, have taken us so far from the show’s original aesthetic/genre it’s hard to analyse this as a shift and more like an inevitable grim outcome, which doesn’t taste as good at all, since there’s not much sense of subversion of the source material going on (because this needed to happen like 7 years ago at this point to work like that) and sadly even Dabb, who has been demonstrating with season 12 he CAN subvert the story from its origins, could not pull off the work needed to salvage this idea from the trainwreck concept…

Anyway before I dive in, all the dreading watching this episode made me think a lot about genre. There’s a difference between episodes which are set in cities (e.g. Dean going to Death to stop him wiping Chicago off the map, or the MotW we’ve seen that have city settings) … Urban Fantasy had a big trend of popularity in mainstream culture, soaking up a lot of themes I noticed, which I guess was really hitting its stride around season 8 & 9 (this is based mostly off my window on the world but it did seem this was totally in line with the amount of urban fantasy I was seeing discussed or stories I came across - my friend who had been churning through dark fantasy romances started lending me urban fantasy novels instead :P). But yeah, not like this show hadn’t gone corporate or done stuff in cities before, but they didn’t really make a big deal of being in cities? This being filmed on location allows them to use the waterfront skyline as an establishing shot and to play with the city as a location, and to develop those urban fantasy ideas. 

Obviously, urban fantasy is popular and interesting and there are some brilliant stories in the genre. But it’s not Supernatural’s area and the best it does with cities is when they are a sort of landscape or vague presence, but the alleys and dark nooks and crannies and dank little hotels are the sort of ways they can use the city as a fairly “rural” setting in the sense that people aren’t around or it’s on the fringes without engaging. Even stuff like the Leviathan storyline is often dealt with by visiting warehouses and complexes which seem to be on the edge of towns - Charlie’s skyscraper job I think was the only time they actually went inner city, and again that was a change of genre to a heist movie one off (which worked well with the themes of the season but moving further and further from horror because even as a gimmick it’s dropping the format completely for a major plot episode) 

As soon as a city landscape is more than 1 lonely person walking in a dark alleyway with something bad following them, but starting to explore what the city MEANS or how the supernatural takes up residence in it as a sort of landscape feature instead of a horror that’s not meant to be there, we’re in to a sort of genre-shift where the themes of urban fantasy take over from the horror (and SPN really struggles with being a horror show still from season FOUR onwards, and from Carver era, basically just gives up anyway :P It has horror-y episodes within a different sort of framework entirely.) 

In Urban Fantasy it’s always about the people and cultures. The good stuff basically feels like it takes you on a walk around the city and shows you stuff you see all the time but with new eyes - turns random things like graffiti and gargoyles into fantastical elements and adds a mythology and magic to stuff you interact with all the time. It sort of invites you to go to the city and look around you and think that some magical underworld/otherworld is existing right alongside you. And it’s a LOT more about the sort of awe and intrigue of that and the normal coming up against the paranormal in an exploratory way. Including subcultures of monsters living among us or just out of sight or with a sort of speak-easy secretiveness of their lives. 

That is a major trope to mark the genre and as Bloodlines is a new show, basically, it actually does get to USE these tropes honestly. Like just looking at it as an urban fantasy, it does the job. It just happens to fit in a trend of pretty unlovable SPN episodes by Buckleming exploring deepest this genre shift in the Buckleming way of totally failing to sell it, so the history of urban fantasy on the show has been tainted by the only writers who actually were interested in it enough to start messing with genre in that way. It just… I don’t know, doesn’t *feel* good mixing with the other elements of Supernatural. This isn’t a formal essay :P

I still can’t think of other Urban Fantasy spn episodes that aren’t Buckleming, because they love their witches and messing around with developing that lore. I suppose season 10′s teasing of Men of Letters vs Grand Coven would have been a more urban fantasy story and stuff if there was any actual development of it like 8x12 also plays on these tropes, with a secret society in the middle of the city, so other MoL related episodes do similar (though, like, 9x16, Cuthbert’s house is in the middle of nowhere, deliberately). The BMoL’s little snippets of life in Britain are similarly in this trope so we have Urban Fantasy style enemies in season 12… Hm. Hi Dabb :P Anyway since Carver era the show’s completely shed its original genre save for in the MotW episodes, when it comes to format (I saw it best described as action-adventure) and setting (hi Bunker as a home base instead of Bobby’s or dusty cabins & decrepit houses) and feel (so garish) and I guess it’s interesting to look at the way this has changed. (I am not so fascinated with this idea that I’ll do the rest of the rewatch analysing everything by these standards, but I guess I’ll keep on mentioning it when the show goes in this direction and eventually have a clearer list of episodes with this feeling to explore…)

* * *

Back to Bloodlines… They make a good start by having an actual city here, and apparently meaning to film on location and to use it in the story. 

* * *

Sadly then pretty much everything else in the premise lets this episode down, as far as I remember, and, well, the entire world judged it when they watched it. :P I think I stumbled once across a confused and sad Tumblr user who really loved this episode and wished for more, and I think there’s some really good points like the main character being a black kid, that WOULD have made it a good show and worth a chance, but… eh, the story didn’t have any bite to it. It wasn’t picked up. And now it sits in the middle of this season like a lead balloon.

* * *

Starting with, the kid having his girlfriend fridged in the first scene in typical Supernatural style, because of clinging to the old tropes and trying to replicate the old show on top of the new one. This is something I saw described repeatedly as the biggest weakness with this episode - especially coming in season 9 carver era fatigue about the emotional loops (that will only get more tiring), people were just not interested in repeating the same old story over and over… When this aired I was still reading reviews and articles more than fandom to try and figure out what the reaction was supposed to be, but I seem to remember a pretty universal agreement here :P

* * *

This does, however, give us our first “in” on examining wtf Dabb is doing… He has been sitting fairly quietly since he joined the show and honestly when I joined fandom I saw posts explaining who he was and why he would have been the right pick to take Bloodlines away if it had been picked up (and no one had noticed he’d already written I guess at that point the second most number of episodes of anyone but Gamble, who he overtook some time in season 10 and is of course still going strong :P) - a lot of the writers like Robbie and Edlund and Carver were discussed fairly often as well as constant mentions of Kripke and Gamble. I found it pretty amusing that 3 years later people were still having to explain who Dabb was when he suddenly got handed the entire show, never mind any time one of his episodes came up and everyone was like !! who wrote this!!!!

Anyway, this is really giving us the example of how he works with mirrors and character re-use and basically repeating elements of the old story anew and as Mel says, “the only certain things in life are death, taxes and Dabb mirroring himself”.

And THAT is relevant to the story now, because now he has his hands on it, and ALL the story belongs to him, everything is picking up the old elements of the story and subverting them completely. The deeper we go into season 12 the more the old story is pretzeled in on itself… ([I’m so in love with this article](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hypable.com%2Fsupernatural-castiel-reveals-lily-sunder%2F&t=MmI2ZTNjNzA3ODY5OGI0ZmViN2I2ZTdmZjNiMTgyMjBlYzc5MGY4ZSxtWU9qeE5TMg%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F157108091403%2F9x20-rewatch-justanotheridijiton-sent-me-a&m=1), and read the stuff after the initial episode recap, listing like 30 Cas episodes and how 12x10 references and subverts their themes and events…)

To get back to this fridging of Tamara, I don’t know if it was lesson learned here reading all the complaints about re-frying the show for Bloodlines, or he was just able to be more clever with the trope since it was already established and waiting to be flipped, but since Bloodlines starts with a fridging, Dabb era officially starts with the great un-fridging of Mary, which this moment is mirroring, by giving up a protagonist with the appropriate manpain to be a lead in a world running on Supernatural’s rules… 

Makes you wonder how Bloodlines would have gone if the woman hadn’t been “killed for narrative symmetry” but been allowed to be her own person - gone through everything with the guy, and generally existed alongside him subverting the rule that women are for manpain… >.> 

* * *

Having to use [Home of the Nutty](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.homeofthenutty.com%2Fsupernatural%2Fscreencaps%2Fthumbnails.php%3Falbum%3D201&t=N2ZjYmQwNmRkM2IzNzM5MTA5MDhkODBlZTY3NGQyMWFiMzY5YzZiNCxtWU9qeE5TMg%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F157108091403%2F9x20-rewatch-justanotheridijiton-sent-me-a&m=1) because I never downloaded this episode to have a personal copy to not have to fuck around with DVDs to get gifs and screenshots, but:

They have a blue and a pink screen above their heads, colour-coding them. It’s obviously hideously cishet to label them blue and pink for dude and lady, but with all the more subtle pink n blue colouring often around Dean (the wall in 10x05) or stuff like the blue and pink diner in 12x10 which I’m still chewing on, I kind of like the plain text version of this. Possibly because this episode is such a keycode to other things in the show like the ridiculous Destiel parallels, setting up basic visual information in Easy Reading mode is pretty amusing to me.

* * *

Ennis goes to talk to the restaurant guy to do the typical ring in the champagne thing. Despite seeming to know him, he’s brushed off rudely when some monsters show up and they’re going to their private section of the restaurant (a splitting of the two worlds - Ennis in the muggle one) and he sees a glimpse in the mirror of a monster (I assume the body guard is a wraith because mirrors and messed up faces). Mirrors also being the portal between worlds, and Ennis has had his first glimpse that something is not quite right - is now someone who is “marked” by the supernatural for having now been given his first little hint the world is not as it seems.

This actually reminds me of 6x01, where Dean was slowly eased back into being a hunter by hearing nothing more than a scream and going to investigate it - while doing so he passed through a lot of dust sheets which metaphorically stood for the same thing - the veil between worlds that Dean was going to move from the normal back to the supernatural

* * *

We then get the little intro to the supernatural as it exists in Chicago. They have an established subculture, various types of monsters all coming together to enjoy this goffik atmosphere. Enoby would love it here. :P There’s even a vampire biting a willing victim (dude vampire, lady victim. keep on playing those tropes literally straight) which feels right out the imaginings of a Twilight fan. This is also where RICH monsters go. I suddenly am thinking of a serious class divide - these are monsters who can afford to come to a fancy establishment, are probably all connected to these monster families who run the city some way or another and have the relative luxury to behave as themselves in large gatherings and to create a subculture. A LOT of the monsters Sam and Dean meet get by on very little, have abandoned places as hideouts and generally are grubbing around on the streets for a meal. These monsters can afford to cover up that they eat people, and can buy in to this society. Sleek clubs are a world of difference from the grubby bars that hunters make their homes away from home. 

So, again, feeling nothing like the show we normally watch, and many of the types of monsters prettied up. The shapeshifters use magic to change their appearance and it’s clearly a high society type of monster because they’re not messy, they can change at will in a very slick way and not depend on copying other people, so they are allowed a sense of self - a flexible one, but one that they can make their own, nonetheless. The alpha shifted this way, so I would suspect to even remotely try to connect them to the show’s lore, their family must be shifter royalty, close to the alpha in, well, bloodline, and clearly doing something to preserve that purity and magical transformation. They probably disown their kin who transform in the gross way - who knows, maybe some of the angry, violent shifters we’ve met in the past have been rejects from this family, angry about being shoved out into the world without any support? :P The first shifter we ever met back in 1x06 was particularly angry about rejection and lack of belonging and feeling like a freak. 

Anyway, just more ways in which these monsters are so far removed from the ones that made Supernatural what it is. They don’t have the sort of raw, honest angst and existential horror about their monstrous-ness that they should. They don’t personally FEEL monstrous, in that outcast and lonely way. I think the shifter, who DIDN’T have to kill to eat, but killed anyway, was a good way to explain a lot of the monsters on the show - any of the ones that embrace killing, even if it’s not overtly spoken, it’s because of the way they’re made to feel like monsters. Any that can get away with blending with humanity (I just watched 7x03 for example) have a choice to try and find a way to live within society (like the vampires in 2x03, all with night jobs, living peacefully) and even then being a monster sets them apart and presents them with difficulties, especially when hunters are drawn to them by accidents or carelessness and they have to defend their right to exist in society… 

* * *

In 12x09 I was flipping out about how Dabb is so great at establishing side characters (and I was thinking about a lot of the interesting ones I’ve passed in this rewatch as well) but yeah no not here. This shifter and werewolf are presented as jackasses and then everyone’s fighting because the slashy hand blade guy comes in (I can not remember which other fictional character he blatantly ripped off now but I remember seeing on my dash the comparison and it was embarrassingly direct :P) so there’s no investment here because, well, despite showing us there might be a more interesting world of monsters, these guys were not it. And now they’re dying and it’s like, so? 

* * *

Ennis attempts to propose to Tamara and it’s really sweet and pretty corny and typical romance. There’s not much reason to be invested in them either, which is all the more obvious when Tamara is literally a throw-away character as the bad guy chucks her aside and she bangs her head so it’s not even TARGETED fridging, like Mary and Jess were so obviously killed by whatever the main story would be.

Also because the last 2 episodes I watched were 12x09 and 12x10 I have now watched 3 episodes in a row where a black woman gets killed >.>

Ugh

* * *

Like, tiny good thing: if this had taken off, it would have been a show with a black lead. Who is really cute and giving it his all.

But. Meh. Fuck that trope >.>

* * *

Anyway, blah blah introducing the uninteresting shifter bloke who is the stand-in Dean. He’s at college but doesn’t feel interested in studying so he steals the answers - all laid back and fun until he gets a call that there’s been a death in the family to drag him back into all their drama. Sort of season 1 Dean swapped with Sam’s place, if you squint. Way too rich :P

Some shipping between Ennis and David would have been cool - Ennis has the mysterious last words from David’s brother to lead him to him, eventually, but there’s girlfriends everywhere, that message was ABOUT Violet.

Season 12 has laid it on thick with the inter-species forbidden love nonsense for angels, though, that this was originally paralleling Dean n Cas. Guess Dabb has a thing for it :P 

* * *

> ENNIS  
> I know what I saw.
> 
> DETECTIVE FREDDIE COSTA  
> And you’re sure? I mean…sure? ‘Cause, what you’re tellin’ me… About this faceless whatever-it-is?
> 
> ENNIS  
> That thing had claws.
> 
> FREDDIE  
> Look, maybe you got confused. You know, maybe – maybe it was some banger with a knife.
> 
> ENNIS  
> I know what I saw.
> 
> FREDDIE  
> I am trying to help.
> 
> ENNIS  
> By calling me a liar?!

This exchange is pretty stupid when you consider a black kid being cross-examined by police. He does know them - the guy references his old man, and I’m vaguely remembering was his dad a cop? So he might be a bit more comfortable with them, but he’s still in a dodgy position, and arguing that it was a “thing” is a terrible idea to “invent” a monster because it just makes him look suspicious.

However it does fit the trope that Ennis is suddenly really credible to monsters after seeing a few things, and now is in that stage where he’s still freaking out about monsters maybe being real. He has to hold onto the memories of what he saw - he can’t question it or lie because he needs to preserve the memories properly, so he doesn’t think he’s gone crazy. Because he’s going to investigate further and he knows holding onto the monster thing is the key to finding out what REALLY happened, and the authorities dismissing it is dismissing the best lead they have.

This of course does fit with the season 9 theme of narratives and stories, because it turns the whole “non-existence” of monsters into a narrative people tell themselves to make them feel better, and certain people discover the “subtext” - the literal world of monsters living hidden beneath our own - and now read the world completely differently. People deny the monsters exist, don’t pick up on the clues, ignore the subtext… And people like Ennis who suddenly discover how to read into it, or the Winchesters who are always searching for cases intentionally reading between the lines to find monsters…

In this case the Urban Fantasy mode of hiding monsters overlaps completely with the horror way that Supernatural uses them, so these are compatible worlds. The genre shift is really like, looking at it through a different lens. Interpreting the same subtext in a different way, but still, importantly, seeing beyond the surface layer.

* * *

Blah blah Ennis has messed up history with his father, hey guess what fitting the profile nicely :P

Sam and Dean conveniently show up now we know everything we need to know about Ennis to let him interact with the bridge between 2 worlds. Dean dismisses the cop by telling him they just won’t tell him what they’re investigating - refusing to let him in on the story. 

We see Sam and Dean from the outside eyes; if you never saw this show before they’d just be weird FBI agents with implausible names who swooped in, took a statement, and swooped out: the suspicious enemy who are probably going to cover it all up (if you still think they’re FBI and have those sort of resources :P) They also listen to what Ennis has to say but then dismiss his story too - “there’s no such thing as monsters” Dean tells him (which is ironic for where Dean is at too). Of course there’s the 2nd level at work that we all know who Sam and Dean are and that this is just drawing attention to the fact another story is at work, a knowing nod that there’s a subtext at work here. 

* * *

The next scene also establishes that the detective also knew about monsters, so now we know Ennis is being played by multiple sides, all telling him that there’s no such thing. All motivation that he has to get to the heart of it because he KNOWS he’s been lied to. The cover up of the world of monsters is the real plot tension at stake, because of course the first step for a muggle human hero in these sort of stories is the discovery phase, so he has to reach this sort of block at first, where he’s made to doubt.

I suppose it also makes Sam and Dean shown in a light where they’re no better than the monsters; everyone has a stake in keeping it from muggles - whether to protect them or to stop the monsters being exposed. 

* * *

> MARGOT  
> Yeah, you’ll what? David, come on. You don’t want this. You ran away to be a human. You always had a soft spot for 'em. Look, you’re out. Stay out.

David being paralleled with all of TFW here. He leaves the family for several years and now the dad is dying… They’re trying to mimic Dean’s carefree yet sensitive swagger with him, and of course it wouldn’t be Supernatural if the “good monster” didn’t have a massive soft-spot for humans and wanted to be like them and live like them, so parallels that endgame for Cas.

In the love story he parallels Dean, though, while at the moment the Sam and Cas stuff is most obvious, of course he ends up mimicking the 6x20 scene from the Dean perspective. There’s a brief mention of her, establishing David was in an inter-species romance and that she’s now being married to someone else. At the moment in the end of season 9 Dean and Cas are in a weird place - I wouldn’t say a break up like some of their others, but Cas is also answering a call to help his family, gathering an army, and Dean is super weird about them. And of course, in a Dabb episode, building up to the “us or them” with Hannah, who was vaguely coded as a romantic threat to Dean in the love triangle - the jealousy was played off a lot more on his side than anything that happened between Cas and Hannah, in the long run. Anywho that’s all waiting to happen, so it’s paralleling Cas’s supposed split loyalty, which also, because of 9x18, we know he was already forced into.

* * *

I think the djinn should have been actually middle eastern but oh well way past the point of judging this episode - why am I even trying :P

* * *

Violet shows up wearing a heart pendant… wow subtle 

(Too much heart etc)

(Mary parallels? She used to have a heart pendant, right? Before she started wearing the ring instead)

She’s also wearing cream, which is beige-ish.

Just to establish these are not nice people, her brother(?) tells her her job is to be silent and pretty. A token figurehead - powerful but only as an image they wield. Which I think is sort of what Metatron does with Cas, because 9x14 showed him he couldn’t beat him down or have him subservient to another angel - he had to be in charge. But Metatron was in charge of the story, so Cas just had to look pretty, play his part, and Metatron would handle the rest >.> Cas is currently “ensnared” in this since he answered the call at the end of 9x18.

* * *

Ennis walks through the city looking around vaguely suspiciously - maybe wondering who is a monster or not around him. The whole transformation of the world part, where he learns to see it with new eyes and to open his eyes to the fact it could be more than he’s noticed before. Perception is the key, and this makes a GOOD follow up to 9x18 telling us how to read a story.

* * *

He goes for the gun, obviously already seeking revenge, and discovers silver bullets - his father kept them, a first sign that he is Right and monsters exist coming from an authority figure he ACTUALLY trusts. 

(And in the wider scheme, also reminds us that in this world there are a lot of law enforcement who one way or another learn about the supernatural and carry on enforcing the law but with juuust a little extra knowledge to help them out)

* * *

Unnecessary flashback of Tamara dying is unnecessary. Thanks Singer. This kid playing Ennis was selling it really well without that being randomly inserted in his Sad And Lonely Revenge Look

* * *

Do the authorities know about the massacre? Did they just… Ask the people at the restaurant what happened and they were like, nah, just that random guy who staggered around outside and died, nothing to do with us, and the police never investigated?

The owner comes in with a mop and bucket. No CSI for monsters :P

* * *

I like that Ennis has changed into a camo jacket - nice symbolism about becoming a soldier on the path to being a hunter and getting revenge.

* * *

Awww he wastes almost all of his dad’s silver bullets. They don’t work on vampires, mate.

* * *

Dean making fun of the food supplies they stock of parts of humans to eat. More monsters being normalised, having a structure to feeding and therefore a supportive subculture. It’s almost like how we eat meat without knowing the animals it came from personally. In both season 6 and 7 the idea of humans as herd animals for monsters to eat was a threat, briefly with Eve, all season with Dick. Turns out organised monsters in cities have been doing it all along. The difference is it’s already in place, instead of the potential horror of it being done. I’m really not a vegetarian but try looking at it from that perspective of a cow walking into a meat cold store :P

* * *

Blah blah getting the monsters talk from Sam and Dean. Dean is flippant about killing the vampire but doesn’t seem super weird about it because there’s no time for the Mark of Cain arc, Ennis just gets to think Dean is more of a dick than he might have 

* * *

Ennis now at a crossroads to become a hunter, do the whole revenge thing, or just go back to his regular life (which he says is ruined, in that whole “burn everything down to motivate the hero” way that, as I said, was really rubbishly done to be convincing here. Like yeah he lost his girlfriend but it’s not like how Sam got shoved onto the road :P Failing to match up to the original story by just being not very committed to character drama over world building… I also think there’s just no developing the dynamic of the characters soon enough - Sam and Dean were back on screen together almost immediately after the title card. They had the whole pilot to show us their development. Now we see tiny establishing scenes for each of the characters and even Ennis’s journey is pretty weak, and it’s just not enough)

> SAM  
> Ennis, listen. I get it. Believe me, I’ve been there. But what we do? It’s messed up. So do yourself a favor and stay out. You can get hurt, too.

Wow. Powerful incentive. No showing, just telling :P

* * *

Anyway NOW Ennis and David are talking, or, Ennis is yelling and waving a gun. David is Mr Exposition so their actual character dynamic building is pretty low. I suppose it mirrors after Sam stops the “intruder” in 1x01 they have a good long talk about how their life works for the sake of exposition, but it felt much more natural than “what are you doing in my room” “there are 5 monster families running the city…”

* * *

David and Violet stand and stare at each other and get really sad.

> VIOLET  
> Is the real butler okay?
> 
> DAVID  
> He’s resting. Locked in a closet.

Thanks Dabb, yeah, this episode IS really heterosexual.

Thinking of which,

> DAVID   
> And I was there. Where were you?

Casually throwing in that old 6x20 dialogue between Dean n Cas. I think this would be less suspicious if there wasn’t another chunk of receycled dialogue somewhere else in the episode…

Anyway it’s interesting because dialogue snatching aside, rather than the context of 6x20 they’re talking about running away together to start a new - human - life. Cas was human this year and Dean ran off to see briefly but in the end they never got their act together and Cas was dragged back into the mix. Likewise it parallels all the times Sam or Dean ran off and made a normal life with Jess, Amelia, or Lisa, and took themselves out of the world of hunting. I was saying 9x09 quietly teased the El Sol go someplace better poster behind Cas when Dean was talking to him at the bar - the last time Cas was human and Dean saw him. Their chance to be together now just a dream. And it would have been a human life together. 

This is actually effective subtext for this season on top of mirroring 6x20. Dabb IS good at this part :P

* * *

blah blah new characters save each other’s lives, still more concerned about girlfriends

* * *

“blah blah five monster families” (again)

*Dean makes fun of the concept*

* * *

> DEAN  
> And sometimes you got to work with the bad guys to get to the worse guys.

Oh hello the entire reason behind Dean’s downfall this season :P

Played straight here. Ennis is not in trouble like Dean is. We’re just ignoring the main plot.

* * *

I like that filming on location means that they can have exterior shots that capture the recognisable city skyline when they go to the grotty abandoned buildings places

* * *

> DAVID  
> I lost someone, too, okay?! But I’m trying here.
> 
> ENNIS  
> I’m sorry about your brother. He spoke about you at the end. He said, "David, I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice.”
> 
> DEAN  
> All right, you guys can kiss and make up later. We got work to do. Come on.

I suppose Dean ships it. 

The whole “I don’t have a choice” theme coming back around here. Justifying really terrible decisions and in this case being the reason that het!DeanCas aren’t together. Which considering this entire season has been just “I did what I had to do” followed by terrible decisions that keep Dean and Cas from each other, yeah.

* * *

Those lights with the cages around them are in the creepy guy’s murder basement.

He’s also, of course, a blatant Metatron mirror, once more trying to construct a story, in this case using the Cas parallel character to kick off a war -

> IRV  
> Why should I believe you? You’re dead. Tomorrow, they will find pieces of you all over town. Oh, won’t the doggies be mad?
> 
> VIOLET  
> That’s what you want. You’re trying to start a war.

He’s also dressing up as a monster (in this case, the “good” guys since he’s trying to disrupt a status quo which is the second best thing to “no monsters at all” :P) and mimicking their kills; Metatron cosplays as Cas briefly, and of course disguises a ton of angel deaths as Cas’s work.

* * *

Werewolves would be a lot better on this show if they weren’t terrible. I mean, just because their powers are rubbish and filming Violet attacking this dude was painfully bad fight choreography. She kinda slow mo leaped at him and then sat on him growling a lot. David power-of-love talks her out of killing the weirdo. I guess her being overcome with rage is also a Mark parallel since this will be kind of how Dean stabs Gadreel and has to be restrained except that moment had dignity and tension (though I think Dean stabbed him in slow mo too, at least it wasn’t AWFUL slow mo :P)… 

Anyway here’s a scene with a werewolf overcome with rage to go with the Garth story immediately after Dean gets the Mark, and 8x03 and 8x04 weirdly mirroring each other AND what is to come in a season and a half, and of course 10x04 being a back-to-business werewolf story. I can’t remember any others connected to big moments in this arc but I might have blanked them out, and there is a werepire right after Dean gets the Mark off and all that action dies down :P

* * *

Oh wow I forgot this ended with Ennis just shooting the guy. Yay revenge? There’s probably quite trite commentary here which this show dealt with years ago about actions defining what is monstrous and conveniently omits that Dean’s headed right into the cosmic toilet as a result of revenge missions, and there’s a very on the nose line:

> ENNIS  
> I only see one monster here.

The show always uses some other means to kill a human monster than a Winchester doing it (unless we’re going seriously bad places - Thinman anyone? :P) just on principle that killing humans is a bit more ethically dodgy; Ennis falls under that rule on THIS show but say this was the start of HIS show… already crossed a line. Oops. Seems like he’d also be falling in with the monsters anyway since this is a set up to be BFFs with Violet and David as the good monsters on his side who like humans and the natural order, buuut. It’s all pretty silly. These poor characters are under developed for the sake of later development, but don’t have any interesting hook to make them worth that development so they never got their show? I guess?

* * *

Ending all the actual drama such as it was with 6 minutes to spare, we now have the long conversation between Violet and David about their relationship. Here’s the bit where Violet shows up to run away with David wearing a trenchcoat. Subtle.

> SAL  
> 'Cause he’s my little brother, Violet. It’s my job to protect him. It’s my job to keep our blood pure.

I somehow feel like this is calling out Dean somehow but aside from the obvious “big brother does terrible thing to protect little brother” that this season kicked off with that is being critiqued I’m not sure what the bloodline part could even be metaphoric for. Possibly you could ignore the “brother” part and look at it as Gadreel having Cas kicked out the Bunker (or, well, Dean doing it because Gadreel) to protect Sam, so he mirrors both characters here - the douchey big brother shifter, and being paired off against Violet with the romantic parallels. 

Also amused about the angel lore from 12x10 and that’s pretty obvious now, but also I guess, wondering what would happen if a werewolf and shapeshifter had a baby. Could the 2 meet without knowing it, hook up, and produce a mutant offspring? - I guess I was also right about the shapeshifters being weird about their bloodline because I’d guess they’re always one bad match away from the sticky gross shapeshifters :P

* * *

Blah blah “David wants to go straight” blah blah “i love him”

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

* * *

> VIOLET  
> I don’t know. I should go.
> 
> DAVID  
> Sure, right. That’s what you do best.

Sure wish Dean n Cas kissed like that after saying lines like that.

Well they’d probably have a ton more chemistry.

* * *

They last-minute reveal a sibling for Ennis just in case (hey, a sister, who we never will see :P).. Now we’re clear of actually having to WATCH this episode I do feel bad we don’t have a show for them, you know, if we started again from scratch, ditched the monster war thing, and let them figure out being hunters in the city together >.>

* * *

*Dean dragged away from this silly story by Cas* Thanks, Cas, you saved them more times than you can ever know. 

Always sad that was such a terse conversation but I guess Mark!Dean is the least likely version of Dean to answer the phone with an accidental “hey Babe” so there’s not much point lingering on their phonecalls.

* * *

Did they have to time that take waiting for a train, or was it just a coincidence? Train symbolism in season 9 is a thing.

* * *

Ennis goes off to get given a ton of main character nonsense heaped on him about starting being a hunter, wearing the ring of his dead partner around his neck, and since we weren’t done stealing elements from the early seasons, getting a mysterious phonecall from his (supposed?) dead father. I really feel sorry for that kid :P He did not deserve *gestures vaguely at everything*


	21. 9x21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watched the day before 12x13 aired. I know. I know.

hey so I have frequently commented on the uncanny way my rewatch lines up with new canon kind of unnerving me at times

anyway for the historical record, 12x13 is the next episode we are waiting to air at the point I start watching and this was in no way planned, this is just where I got to in a 2 year process.

* * *

I fucking knew Ramiel had a lamp that used to belong to Metatron in his basement.

* * *

I love that the recap to start with is pretty much all 9x18 after some basic season 9 angel war stuff. I sometimes forget that it’s a huge season-changing plot episode because I never focus on all the drama that takes place during it but look at all the really meta stuff. But it scrapes together the rest of the arc and puts it into a sensible shape to actually finish the season with, although with Buckleming episodes you NEVER need the ENTIRE recap because it’s always too long and covering too many details like they don’t trust us to remember everything that’s going to be mentioned here. It’s literally a 2-parter recap that after a minute of angel stuff switches to recapping Abaddon’s entire season and Crowley and the Mark of Cain and the hell hounds and some more Crowley and anyway we’re 1:55 into the episode and oh my god should I be actually collecting which episodes have the longest recaps? I bet 12x13 is going to be 5 minutes

* * *

Leith, Scotland - 1723

Hey Gavin. I was always disappointed they didn’t make him ginger, since Crowley is obviously not wearing the same meat as when he was Ferrrgus. And then Rowena showed up and I was doubly mad that Gavin was not ginger. 

Anyway this is pouring one out that they cast someone who wouldn’t be wildly unchallenging for people to think was related to moderately-successful-literary-agent instead.

* * *

Also, Abaddon busts in and is ginger and says she’s a “friend of the family” - with hindsight would it have made sense for Gavin to even wonder if they were related? How much does he know about Rowena? It seems like Crowley didn’t know her since he was a boy. Did he ever complain about her? I feel like he’d be the sort to tell Gavin lurid stories about his own horrible childhood to make him shut up and appreciate it :P

Crowley called Abaddon “the world’s angriest ginger” in 9x10 and honestly if I didn’t mention it then, getting in to the beginnings of Crowley’s own family drama here is basically demanding I stop and laugh at this. I don’t think Rowena is angry - justifiably so if she is - but Crowley certainly has some issues with Abaddon that I think we never really appreciated at the time.

* * *

> ABADDON  
> Yes. You’re packing. Sailing for the colonies. I know all about it. Change of plans.

I mean, at least they’re upfront about the horrific retcon, the one genuinely open wound on the show that just *turns to scream out of the open window for a while*

* * *

> [A YOUNG MAN enters ]
> 
> YOUNG MAN  
> Ooh. What’s this, then? Are we having a party?

I wonder if Gavin will still be gay/bi in 12x13? 

(There’s 1 bed in the room and this guy also has a key and, well, they’re planning on skipping the country to the new world. Meta of the time went into this but I suppose I have not much else better to do here with his story than explain as it unfolds :P)

Anyway who knows - same director and everything, Buckleming aren’t half bad at referring to their OWN canon, they’re as cheery as anyone else about implying Rowena is bi, even if they can be staggeringly homophobic in other ways. Guess we see how the wind is blowing.

Like right here they just immediately kill Gavin’s boyfriend and he doesn’t mention it again all episode >.>

* * *

The opening with the angels is still so ridiculous but I’ve never watched this NOT on a terrible stream before and I need to appreciate at DVD quality the angels watching Metatron’s useless plant/trap/whatever because their faces are exactly the sort of “what the FUCK am I watching” expressions necessary here while he talks :P

I love the implication here:

> EZRA  
> Oh, I can’t tell you how great it feels to finally have a night off, right, guys?

Cas is working his army hard… weirdly more appreciative of the angels telling stories about eating pizza and actually taking the opportunity to kick back on Earth and go to bars and enjoy a night off.

I have a lot of feelings about this because Cas’s angels are the most human - they still sound angel-y when they switch to talking about plot stuff, but when they’re kicking back they sound regular and human. Considering angels go BACK to trying to live somewhat like their old selves in Heaven, Cas’s army is the most randomly dressed, relaxed bunch of angels we’ve ever seen, and this didn’t mark a permanent change, as once they were back in charge, they give this up and all angels wear black/white/grey again. After 12x10 I have a lot more feelings than normal about angels and proximity to humans. Cas had his angels doing things like healing humans at the hospital for no reason other than that it was a good thing to do. Cas’s angels seemed closer to human than any of the other factions we came across. These angels were changing and adapting to living on earth - making the most of it and blending in and maybe getting to know having a vessel that they may NEVER have done before.

Just… aargh.

* * *

Cas let his angels have a night off and when they asked what they were supposed to DO with a night off he squinted and furrowed his eyebrows and thought about what Sam and Dean would do and said, “Humans seem to enjoy going to bars in their spare time” and all the angels took it as gospel and shuffled obediently off to have fun >.>

* * *

> EZRA  
> … being handpicked by the big man himself. I’m not really supposed to talk about it. ‘Cause it’s Metatron.

Back in 9x14 there was some moment like this which had a ton of ambiguity about who was being referred to of all the available villains, of Bartholomew, Gadreel or Metatron. Now Cas and Metatron are ambiguously blurred together, though on first viewing it might not be so obvious because we don’t know these are Cas’s angels, but “the big man” is a reference to a boss and their boss is Cas and they’re like ??? this angel seems to be talking to us like he’s on our team (and having the same night off as us) but is Castiel hand-picking anyone for anything - and  _then_ he goes and drops Metatron’s name after a weighty pause.

There are a lot of weighty pauses this season

* * *

Also blurring good guys and bad guys - the martini being delivered to the angels’ table looks like the one Abaddon drinks later

ALSO then Ezra walking down the alley sees the silhouette of a man in a long coat and stops in horror before realising it’s not Cas, relaxes, and then is nabbed by Cas’s angels.

The scary alley moment is more than enough to mimic the usual patterns of victim and monster in the show and the spectre of a man in a long coat seems monstrous to Ezra, using Cas as the villain… 

Once Ezra is chained up and waiting, Cas’s appearance is heralded by terrifying slow footsteps and Ezra’s fear:

> EZRA  
> Is that…him?

* * *

Side note: the classy purple angel who I’ve always had a soft spot for is not named in the episode but appears to be called Benjamin by the transcript. 

* * *

Obviously not Cas’s BFF Benjamin but they’ve been very good about not re-using angel names. “Benjamin” appears to only be in this episode and isn’t named anywhere in the dialogue, so I suppose easy to ignore.

* * *

Dean shows up wearing his bizarre/excellent putrid yellow jacket which is an incredible stretch by the wardrobe department to find something unflattering. It brings out all the worst in his face, which I never knew had a worst until I saw the promo pics for this episode – for the first time. Of course it’s yellow because sulphurous connections because Dean’s about to be a demon.

I’ve seen it compared in a more favourable light (literally) to Brokeback mountain and a jacket one of the characters wore because of the hug scene, but I think in general the whole point is to really underline in red pen a dozen times that Dean’s in deep with a demonic connection.

(I was also just reminded of Sam’s jacket in 12x12 which is an eye-catching reddish-pinkish-orange, depending on the light. An anon helpfully suggested he might have a witchy descent (which is just teasing after how many times we’ve hoped for it and written speculation that FINALLY it might be Sam’s time) but aside from red being witchy in general, now I think about it, it would sort of be the colour of Rowena’s hair :P (Somehow this entire rewatch is about ginger-ness))

* * *

God I do not miss season 9 Dean.

(All he’s done so far is hear “commander”, look affronted, look at Sam and whisper “commander?!” in an affronted way and I should be flipping out from the Destiel of it all but Dabb era has been  _wrecking_  me

like

I have it paused and they’re about to hug

but I just don’t feel it, you know?

Not when in season 12 there’s a serious danger of them nuzzling or clinging like they don’t want to let go

* * *

*pat pat*

*Dean allows himself 1 hand placed on Cas’s back out of Sam’s sight to stay for about half a second longer than it should*

God we are so fucking spoiled right now

* * *

* * *

Can’t believe we used to think Destiel was canon off of season 9 nonsense

* * *

> DEAN  
> So…Commander?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Yeah, not my idea.

wait never mind

Dean just can’t let things go about Cas, can he? All he needs is a waitress to flirt with him or the angels to give him a cute nickname - I mean, intimidating title - and off Dean goes.

Has he said anything this episode except for “commander” yet?

* * *

blah blah talking tactics and angel war how can a conversation between these two be dull?

Aside from being dull, the scenario is twisted around completely implausibly:

> CASTIEL  
> Dean, this angel-on-angel violence – it has to end. Someone has to say, “enough.”

right yeah good, then Cas asks them to interrogate the angel and wtf. We aren’t hurting angels! Unless Dean does it!

But nah we need a cliffhanger so Dean can say this:

> CASTIEL  
> Well, you’ve had success at these situations before. If you don’t want to do it, I understand.
> 
> DEAN  
> Who says I don’t want to do it?

so it looks like a cheap 4x16 moment and I guess we’re seeing Dean all twisted up and about torture and showing how he wants to do it and so on but… Ugh, CAS. Why do you suffer for these things in your characterisation :P Especially bloody stupid ones that in the same scene you are being characterised properly over - it’s like they just drop that after paying lip service to where Cas’s arc is actually supposed to be at, to put in something entirely different. 

Imagine if Cas had asked them to go talk to Ezra because they were better at interrogations than him - without torture - but Dean shows up in there with an angel blade clearly ignoring that and wanting to go the threatening torture-y route. Cas stays in character, Dean is scary, easy!

* * *

At this point, actually looking forward to the trips to Crowley and Abaddon scenes

> CROWLEY  
> So, here’s the thing, boys and girls – we have a crisis. Admittedly, a crisis of my own making.

He really never wanted that throne :P He tries to reassert his power and declare himself the winner just for being back at it - and now we know WHY he’s so motivated to always go back for the throne - obviously with Abaddon it’s too personal not to do it to spite her, but then again in literally 3 episodes Crowley is back on vacation, bored stupid of the job, and just enjoying hanging with Dean instead. He loves the idea of getting Dean to run Hell for/with him, to take the edge off the boredom (and probably scare demons out of fighting against him).

> ABADDON  
> And I’m hearing that one of them also has the mark of Cain – all bad news, since the Blade is the one thing that can bring about my –
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Utter destruction.
> 
> ABADDON  
> To be indelicate. But here’s the thing, pet – same goes for you. And once I’m gone, who do you think’s next on those cute boys’ list?

Now there’s a familiar line - pretty much the last thing said in 12x12 was Lucifer reminding Crowley of this. Crowley here has both a healthy reason to fear it, but also, since 9x16, a reassurance that Dean seems to be controllable and that he might just be able to control him or at least NOT die by his hand, so long as he plays his cards absolutely right.

Crowley getting demon!Dean for his own uses seems like it HAD to happen once Dean got the Mark because Crowley would never be able to just let him be - even if they always have that knife (and it’s great that it actually COULD kill Crowley but I don’t know if they’ve ever even given him a glancing blow from it because he always plays them well enough to avoid it) Dean with the Mark is violent and dangerous in a whole new way. 

Not sure Crowley counted on feelings, mind you :P

But, regardless, season 10 does not take long at all for Crowley to feel safe with Dean, and even in season 11, newly cured of the Mark and compelled by Amara to come help her, in 11x02 Dean can’t kill Crowley. At this point it’s more like they need to grudgingly accept they’re friends or something? >.>I definitely find it interesting this taunt comes up again because Crowley should be secure DEAN at least likes him enough not to kill him because first he thought he puppet-stringed him into not doing it and then it seemed that they genuinely cared about each other enough not to do it… If anything, the fact Sam and Mary would still happily kill Crowley are the problem :P

Cas… Cas owes Crowley TWO, has been threatening to murder him for years, and still hasn’t done it, mostly because they avoid socialising unless it’s the sort of desperate scenario where they have to put aside their issues and deal with a bigger problem.

I suspect Crowley has a lot of contingency plans for finding himself trapped in an elevator with Cas when they have no greater reason to work together, and now I’ve typed that I REALLY want that episode :P

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> To be clear… I’ll not be joining you ever. Except at your death scene, where I shall burst into song. Goodbye. You have no hold over me.
> 
> ABADDON  
> Oh, no?
> 
> [She snaps her fingers and GAVIN appears.]
> 
> ABADDON  
> Gavin, honey, say hello to daddy.

blah blah old fandom complaints. Abaddon knows Crowley is emotionally vulnerable because of her spy, Lola, so the same trick Bobby WASN’T dumb enough to go for seems to be an option here. Probably illustrating how Crowley has changed specifically by using this exact same exploitable weakness as 6x04

… it still comes across as really silly and timeline breaking to do this particular thing and NOT send Gavin back >.>

Since it’s Buckleming I have no idea how they’ll deal with this plothole or if they’ll even mention it.

Anyway Crowley folds like a cheap suit, which he’d hate because he wears expensive suits

Crowley’s got to have saved them a couple of times now because it was convenient but this is I guess the first time really playing off his heart to make him save anyone. Even Sam and Dean don’t seem to think that’s worth doing despite knowing how messed up he is. While they had hi in the Bunker immediately after his almost-cure they didn’t exactly try guilting him into helping them

I wonder how it might have played differently if Dean saw that confession, not Sam. I seem to remember Sam commenting on it to Crowley but not nearly enough to actually gain anything from emotionally manipulating him :P

To be honest considering Abaddon was messing up Gavin’s eyes, and Crowley breaks and asks her to stop, there might be a parallel with him “saving” Dean by putting the First Blade back in his hand and waking him up as a demon. Gavin wants to be a Prince of Hell (fat fucking chance) but Crowley has what he’s looking for there in Dean. It’s all inverted though, despite Crowley caring for both - obviously Dean does not want that job at all.

* * *

Anyway then Sam figures out how to do the interrogation without anyone getting hurt, Winchesters discover it’s really fun to tease angels.

more on the surface cooperating and working as a team and presenting a united front

* * *

> GAVIN  
> You are not my father. My father was Fergus MacLeod, a simple tailor. A drunk, a monster.
> 
> ABADDON  
> Sounds about right.
> 
> GAVIN  
> He looked nothing like you, and I buried him.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> A lot can change in 291 years.

Just gonna assume Fergus was ginger and you can’t stop me.

The idea of Crowley being not-suave is slightly terrifying but like Rowena, I think he’s held up entirely by determination to be more than he was in a “past life” - Rowena never technically died but she remade herself completely and I think sustains herself out of pure spite at the world that mistreated her :P

I guess Crowley’s always known about suits, but that doesn’t mean he had the best ones.

* * *

There’s something vaguely wrong about Abaddon and Crowley almost seeming to co-parent Gavin with the amused back and forth looks as he discovers where he is. Like, they set aside their differences to mock him? Is this a staggeringly clever parallel to what Sam and Dean are doing with Ezra as we back and forth, or are these just scenes where they wanted to write all ~comedic moments~ between all the characters… I have no trust of this :P The irony about Gavin thinking they’re in Heaven and these are angels is just… too heavy anvils.

* * *

Oh, I was wrong, under his yellow jacket, Dean is wearing the shirt he dies in, which makes this episode, 9x23 and 9x05. Still a weird place for it to pop up. I’ve been having a lot of issues with 9x05 randomly relating to important episodes but, like… not… lately :P

* * *

This is still really cold to US:

> DEAN  
> You’re a fan. Just 'cause you’re hot for Metatron… …or Bieber or Beckham… Just 'cause you know everything about them doesn’t mean that you actually  _know_  them. 
> 
> SAM  
> Or that they even know you exist. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Ooh, that’s cold, Sammy.
> 
> SAM  
> I’m just sayin’, man.

Going back to the Becky portrayal of fans… Which to Sam and Dean PERHAPS in-character they hadn’t really had time to think of it differently… It’s much clearer from an outside POV that Charlie represents a better type of fan, but she’s a friend to them and even if she read the books, well… I don’t think they’d think of her as a fan. CAS said he’d read them and admired Chuck’s work. :P

Also generally in episodes with fans, there comes around some validating point about their engagement even if it’s disagreement or confusion elsewhere, being a fan is given approval or at least an attempt at understanding, especially as they learn and grow from these encounters, seeing themselves from outside eyes. Bringing it up out of context without any wider message, it just sticks with them not liking fans, and Buckleming maybe having a bone to pick, and is just generally awful.

* * *

> SAM  
> Wait a second. Just, please, uh… Clarify this for me. You desperately wanted this job, but you didn’t know what it was? 
> 
> EZRA  
> Well, until you were chosen, the exact nature of the mission was kept a secret. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Wow. 
> 
> SAM  
> Wow.

There’s possibly something to be said here about Cas and Metatron in 8x22 but I have no idea how to get to it while going through Buckleming stuff which now sounds like a critique on Cas for not reading the terms and conditions though Metatron did sort of tell him what they were up to…

* * *

> GAVIN  
> You sold your soul?! Sold it?! For an extra three inches of willy?! 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Priorities change. I wasn’t the bon vivant that I am now. I’ll simplify – my soul did a stint in hell, where it became demonized. Then I had to possess another person so I could traffic with the living. Any of this sticking?

If 12x13 does what I WANT it to do (and assuming Dabb has any ability to wrangle Buckleming onto the same “flawlessly fixing borked canon” train the rest of the writers are on :P) then this does not have to break canon as it currently does,  _provided_  they put Gavin the fuck back in 1723: this episode establishes he apparently didn’t know EXACTLY what details and phrasing he told Bobby in 6x04 – he didn’t even know Fergus sold his soul, never mind what for. In 6x04 he was more than happy to rat Crowley out for all of this. Now, however, we have a weird loop where Crowley is the one who tells him this info and unless there are some very complex loops in the way time travel affects ghosts and personal belongings  _left_ in your original time, making a sort of bizarre “I can be a ghost before I died” thing (??? I write time travel nonsense for fun and this is making even my head hurt and I just randomly added two characters basically meeting eyes across two separate unrelated time travel out of body experience trips to a novel I didn’t think had enough time travel shenanigans this week :P) – Gavin has to go back so that he can die in the right time, and be a ghost to now pass on this info that he didn’t know…

* * *

Argh.

* * *

  


I really like this angel’s style. Modern fashion but absolutely in Cas’s model. Like, this is sort of catwalk Castiel :P she gets to wear leggings.

* * *

Cas should wear leggings

* * *

Anyway more admiration for the angels here, because “Benjamin” (if that is his real name) is also so snappily dressed, and they’re BFFs who probably judge people together, so these fashion-conscious angels are another little detail I love about Cas’s army. They still loosely fit the idea that angels either wear suits as a uniform, or she takes Cas’s general aesthetic and dresses like it, but of course both put a different, fashionable spin on it… So different from the stuffy angels of the past, while sort of fitting a pattern that fits for angels…

* * *

RIP Ezra, the most useless angel we have ever met. He was clearly a plant from Metatron to do exactly this (not that he knew it), since I don’t think it’s just his death that was planned by the traitor within Cas’s army. Metatron WANTED Cas to find the not-portal and see that mocking fake Heaven, and so he gets all that information to him by giving him an angel so useless he’ll blab the entire script. I honestly don’t even know if Metatron is controlling Ezra to say all this or if he was that terrible all of his own volition :P

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> I was sure everyone here was loyal. Finally united by a common cause. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, that’s the problem. See, you don’t think anybody’s lying. I think everybody’s lying. It’s a gift. 

I think they TRY to write Cas properly but fall down when the plot stuff happens. There’s nothing wrong in general with the set up here and Cas’s beliefs, except for when things they decide to do for the plot suddenly contradict them :P

In this case, good. Cas believes that these angels were truly committed to whatever he’s been saying to them about their current mission and I guess relying on the angel hive mind. I wish there had been more emphasis on Cas’s uncertainty about doing this because season 6 but he does have to step into a leadership role, and wrangling angels without drastically reprogramming them (e.g. when you need an army in a hurry to catch a target that you’re worried about, and don’t have time to do more than throw in some house rules like “no dress code” and “take Friday nights off to go to a bar” or “do side quests at the hospital”) means relying on some of those more angel traits like loyalty to a cause.

The angels are so messed up now though, that without actual unquestionable leaders like the archangels, listening to Metatron and listening to Cas weigh about the same, and some angels think Metatron is the new god or are willing to deal with him as such in order to get back to Heaven (same difference) and Cas has these soldiers loyal to him…

Of course Metatron is playing on their idealism, which we’ll get into next episode with the suicide bombers “taking it too far” but this is the early stages of his plan and it’s playing off basically this mindset – that Cas is hoping for idealism and loyalty. Especially as he has pure good intentions for it (HOSPITALS. ANGELS. AAAH it’s been years and I still scream about it) and Metatron is basically taking this Cas stuff and throwing it back in his face.

* * *

Anywho. The Dean stuff is kind of still so blunt and cruel and I literally don’t know this man. I mean, I’ve got season 7 on one end and season 12 on the other when it comes to stuff I’ve been watching lately. Wandering back to Mark!Dean is really bizarre. I remember wank about how this particular exchange was kind of… so un-Dean and not nice of him to say to Cas, but considering on both sides of this arc a normal squishy Dean exists, I really kind of appreciate the acting.

While also loathing it.

* * *

Be strong, Lizzy. 4 episodes after he loses the Mark he’s washing cars in booty shorts. Dean’s still in there.

* * *

Anyway!! One of the BIG redeeming scenes of this episode which I love to bits from so many directions (Sam and Cas!!! Talking!!!!! Let them be friends 2k17!!!!!!) and am just gonna quote in its entirety:

> CASTIEL  
> I wanted to ask you about Gadreel, the time he possessed you. 
> 
> SAM  
> It’s not really something I like to – 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Sam, please. 
> 
> SAM  
> He didn’t possess me completely – more like we, uh… shared housing. I was still me.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Did you ever sense a presence? 
> 
> SAM  
> I don’t really know what I felt. I mean, maybe that I wasn’t completely alone. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Did you ever feel threatened? 
> 
> SAM  
> No. More that he… wasn’t at rest, l-like he had unfinished business. Now that we know more about him, I-I’d say he felt misunderstood.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> But not – not a danger, not hostile.
> 
>  SAM  
> No. I was wrong, obviously. He killed Kevin.

I LOVE the way it codes Gadreel as a restless spirit/vengeful ghost. After season 7 had such a detailed exploration of that for Bobby and now Dean is on a descent that in season 10 will also be directly and openly paralleled to being a vengeful ghost, this description had me excited for that parallel since this aired when it came to Dean, as well as just appreciating what this does for Gadreel (and in a way what it says about angels as he’s paralleled to Cas too for some of his actions to Cas’s in earlier seasons).

I think his vengefulness is really interesting as a way to look at it. We saw Bobby descend into vengefulness because he was given more and more reasons to rile himself up against Dick, until in the end he possessed a maid and marched off to try and kill Dick himself. Obviously there’s similar parallels just because Gadreel possessed Sam (and his own vessel is going to get caught in the crossfire, not that anyone spares a thought for him despite him TWICE being depicted on screen without Gadreel in him) and ended up being thrown at targets at least one of whom was picked for the same reason Bobby got so angry at Dick – Gadreel killing his torturer was a no-brainer for him, and got to vent a lot of anger at his treatment. It softened him up to carry on killing, and like Bobby was warned about becoming a vengeful ghost eventually you just start hurting people and it becomes a pattern…

I sort of feel like as well it justifies that Gadreel is on borrowed time and softens his need to redemption to being less proving himself to anyone else (though from main character eyes, I think he would – maybe Heaven would be less impressed with his redemption just because it’s a footnote detail to them) and more to personal realisation in that same way Bobby knew it was time to move on, many other ghosts we’ve seen reach that point, and Dean in the end also went and reached out to Death, assuming it was HIS time to move on as well and that he couldn’t keep hurting people.

(Yikes – this makes me realise I have literally never talked about this idea since the middle of season 10 when I didn’t know how it was going to resolve aside from presenting this idea… 10x23 was underwhelming enough I forgot that my favourite metaphor for this arc had played itself out correctly :P)

Anyway I am always liable to end up writing reams about Gadreel so I should probably stop, as all his stuff is yet to come, and I think the dialogue speaks for itself about how beautiful it is Sam felt his presence and I guess… wasn’t troubled by it. Like, if he felt different, and in hindsight realised his change in mood must have been Gadreel, then that translates to Sam having felt this on top of his normal emotions (I talked about how Gadreel seemed to be influencing Sam at various points while that was going on) – if Sam felt this too, I think that translates well into the almost nervous energy he had at times (9x04 especially since it showed him chilling at the Bunker except for where he was throwing himself into massive tasks, but in general being peppy and defying Dean’s nervousness about him staying home and resting up – Sam himself didn’t succumb to any vengeful anger over that time, even in the scenes where he was dealing with Crowley. He’s so much more well-balanced than he used to be, honestly :P)

Also eee Sam and Cas talking. Cas apologetic but also in need of answers, and looking sympathetically at Sam all through this. Sam being troubled but also caring enough about Cas to open up and feel comfortable about talking about it to Cas… yessss

There are SHOCKINGLY few scenes of them being emotionally kind to each other like this

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> I mean, I beat you, starved you, came home drunk, beat you some more, woke up hungover, and, yeah, I beat you. In all fairness, I didn’t really have any role models. My mother was a witch!

Note to self because a promo for 12x13 came out already while I was working on this – Gavin knows she’s a witch! And he’s asking how she’s still alive even after seeing how much nonsense this family has.

My confidence is a wee bit shaken but we’re sticking with it :P I’m sure we all have MacLeod family drama rage on the back burner that this episode is going to bring up in full.

Anyhow, I vaguely remember people paralleling this to what Rowena and Crowley talk about when it comes to her neglect. My internet is down but I recall discussion of how many pigs Fergus had been worth selling for :P Long story short, perpetuating abuse and neglect to create this messed up family. Gavin seems like the most well-adjusted but we’ve left him alone for 3 years and he’s got this brilliant legacy so who knows what’s up.

I also wonder given the themes of the season, if he’s maybe knocked someone up with a baby-out-of-time, so even if they send him back to his watery grave (that he fucking owes the universe and this season has ~cosmic consequeeences~ as a threat) there’s some more MacLeod fucked up abandoned children out there >.> Rowena mentioned her own father and how much Gavin looked like him… Given how well HER life turned out I suspect this might not be a good thing in both the parallel to Gavin, AND her own backstory. Like, she doesn’t seem about to say “well I had a normal childhood, this was all just teenage rebellion that went too far” or something :P

* * *

> GAVIN  
> So… If you’re a king… that would make me… Prince? 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> And you say I’ve never given you anything. A title!

I had to stop this to [make a gifset](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/157588694628/what-the-hell-is-a-prince-of-hell-the) which I think explains everything I might have said here

* * *

Crowley with retconned hindsight is just like “fuck it” “my kingdom is based solely on the fact a prince of hell wants to fish in peace and I let him” “this is the most unintentionally hilarious thing that has happened to me in 300 years” “I love my son” “I actually love him”

“give the fucker what he wants”

* * *

> GAVIN  
> And if I was to accept you as my father, you could keep me from eternally burning in hell? No matter my sins?
> 
> […]
> 
> GAVIN  
> This might work out. For the first time in my entire life, I can see possibilities, a future… Just as soon as you take me back to my own time and I can board that ship for the new world.

Oh my poor queer little Prince of Hell. You have a get out of jail free card but hear the call of the New World, where you can be yourself and know full well you’re not going to hell no matter how many dudes you bang… it’s the life you always dreamed of.

(Someone should really just tell him, dude, Gavin, your prince of hell-ishness… God is bi. Be chill. You’re fine)

* * *

I think I promised to go into this further when I got here, but honestly those lines are so blatant. Gavin thinks he’s going to burn in Hell, and he wants to start a new life. He MAY be a criminal or something and just on the run and there’s some boring back story they’ll give us. But for now, I remember everyone and their mum blogging about how he was queercoded in this episode (and his friend in the room with one bed and a hot red head to share really ruin the ‘on the run murderer’ speculation :P)

* * *

I love how Gavin immediately gets confident and sits down in the chair that Abaddon and Crowley have sat in while in a position of power…

A position where Abaddon ends this episode stabbed and Crowley has to sit in the chair shot and useless, and Gavin – well he’s talking about Crowley sending him home to board his ship that will go down and take this entire timeline with it right now.

* * *

Meanwhile, Cas leaps straight to action on Sam’s word of trust. Obviously he was thinking about reaching out to Gadreel because after hunting him before, 9x18 had been a bit of a turning point for everyone. I don’t know if Dean shared his intel on Gadreel but it seems unlikely they DON’T share notes like this – despite never seeing them talk it all out on screen, TFW generally knows each other’s shit unless it’s MEANT to be a secret.

So somewhere or other Cas has been musing on it, that Gadreel was captured and Metatron may or may not have used it as part of an elaborate set up, but Gadreel sure was ready to die and gave them ALL that lingering look as he was handed back over to Metatron (and Dean beat the SNOT out of him, you’d think he’d want to get as far away from them as possible :P)

And clearly he has some way to communicate with Gadreel, despite the fact that previously he had been hunting him fruitlessly… Perhaps a spell can send a message one way or angel radio can be directed, but the actual  _location_  part doesn’t work….

Which just gives me weird feelings about the longing retcon and  how Cas can always tell where his humans are…

I mean Metatron tapped the line obviously because he’s watching EVERYTHING but

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Thank you for coming. And thank you for coming alone.
> 
> GADREEL  
> I’ve seen you through Sam Winchester’s eyes, and he trusts you.

*screams some more about how they’re face to face BECAUSE of Sam on both sides, vouching for everyone’s character and they in turn implicitly trust Sam’s character judgements completely and honestly they just work together so well after this and aaaaaah*

* * *

> GADREEL  
> You have a reputation for honor.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> In some circles. As for reputations, yours precedes you.

Aaaaaah but reputation. Cas’s reputation gets worse and worse but this season presents his story very interestingly from the angels. Ephraim, Bartholomew and now Gadreel have heard of knew first hand that Cas was above all a good and honourable angel and solider. Gadreel taps into the rumour mill – he based his decision to help Dean on a character reference from CAS and in turn used Cas’s name and how he knew his reputation and Dean’s to gain Dean’s initial trust…

Clearly he’s listening to the nice things angels say about Cas, and the later character defamation where all the angels seem to have nothing nice left to say about him starts later… 1 episode later, and then quickly escalates >.>

* * *

Cas’s reaching out makes Gadreel defensive too quickly – I think Cas underestimates his trauma a wee bit –

> GADREEL  
> What happened in the Garden was not my doing.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I know you feel misunderstood. And you’re eager to redeem yourself and maybe more. 
> 
> GADREEL  
> You refer to my support of Metatron’s campaign to rebuild heaven? 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Your support? You’ve recruited for him, you’ve killed for him. And I know you truly believe it’s for the greater good, but you’ve placed your faith in the wrong master.

He wants to relate his own experiences and need to redeem himself to Gadreel’s feelings. I think between Gadreel and the good reputation rumours and this, Cas should have played up a bit more that he’d slaughtered thousands in Heaven and felt bad about it because it’s pretty accusatory :P

I find it interesting he says “wrong master” – as I was saying, he and Metatron are rivals, presented even as equals, especially with the faith in them. This makes Cas sort of indirectly owning that he’s the “higher power” in charge here, which I don’t particularly like but I suppose he’s thinking “commander” not “cult leader” (as Dean accuses him of next episode) and he’s keeping that distinction where few of the angels are, while meanwhile dropping back into his military mindset in a way we basically NEVER get to see Cas do when it comes to command and plans and stuff even if we do get him being tactical sometimes…

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> I know him too well, Gadreel! I made the same mistake, and it led to the fall. 
> 
> GADREEL  
> Which led to my second chance. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> This is about more than just you.

Cas continues trying to pull Gadreel back… he has a point here, although I’m more concerned as with many Buckleming dialogue decisions, why Gadreel was defending that point in the first place. There’s so many little character un-intuitive lines that I think were meant to have juuust that little more subtlety that were totally botched somewhere in the “this is what we mean” to “what we actually wrote” process :P

* * *

Like Crowley talking out why Gavin should hate him and ending up in completely the wrong place. Or starting from it. That bugged me :P

* * *

Anyway I love Cas lying on a sofa crying about how much he loves his family but I also love BAMF angel Cas arguing these things about duty and their mission and what they were ‘made’ for with other angels just because that whole angel mindset is fascinating to me

* * *

*Dean has flashbacks to the Mark*

This can not end well. It looks like it’s really messing him up :P

On the other hand I just noticed Sam is wearing a horrible green shirt we rarely see and I’m distracted.

* * *

Imagine if he wore it with the orange jacket.

* * *

Brb getting the First Blade because we’re just suddenly decided after the halfway point to link up with the other part of the plot.

> SAM (disgusted)  
> Oh! Come on, Crowley! You really, uh, uh, have to hide the Blade in a corpse? Not – not  _with_  a corpse but  _in_  a corpse?

Sam Bucklemings all over the place – they had this info already but he seems to be reacting fresh to it which would be fine because EW GROSS WHAT IS YOUR DAMAGE but it’s too much exposition explaining that the Blade is in there, and Jared is just… not committed to that much exposition, so transforms into Buckleming!Sam, who often sounds bemused by the words coming out of his own mouth.

* * *

I do love that jaunty piano music (which I have looked up several times in various contexts because it’s clearly public domain or something & always forget what it is) that they use to show Crowley and the New Prince of Hell are chilling. Gavin is reading his newspaper, Crowley’s just kind of sitting there plotting.

I have no idea what he’s planning to do at this point. Abaddon will kill him easily because she massively out-powers him (see also: everything I said so far in the rewatch about this, everything I said in 12x12 about this :P) but he eventually warns Dean it’s a trap, when he’s already coming here with the first blade, just not knowing Abaddon is here too… Like, what was his plan if Dean bailed and didn’t show?

As a display of control it’s a bit counterintuitive because comes up here to have a showdown with Abaddon anyway despite the warning, so Crowley should discover Dean CAN’T be commanded…  _but he kind of really needs Dean to kill Abaddon for him_.

Maybe he just trusted he could do it but used the one word he knew that was a code to tell Dean to be more careful, but…

* * *

Anyway we had a “Romeo” and “Juliet” in 2 adjacent episodes, and I saw people talk about how that was Destiel just because all the other love arc stuff but honestly, the whole Juliet thing reflects waaay more on Crowley, and his yearning for love still unrealised since 8x23, but building up to him FINALLY snaring Dean in 9x23… And well, hindsight is everything :P

* * *

> GAVIN  
> I’m going to the colonies. I’m workin’ my way across. I’ve given my word!

Ooh so confirmation he was not A: running away or B: being sent… A different obligation. Maybe THIS is about his poor dead boyfriend who honestly there is NOTHING else directly about in the episode, like mentioning his friend was clearly just Too Gay to imply ANYTHING else about him…

* * *

Let Gavin be gay 2k17

* * *

> DEAN (on phone)  
> All right, we’re on our way.
> 
> CROWLEY (on phone)  
> Oh, and, Dean, you need to get a move on. It’s a good day’s drive from Poughkeepsie.

Dean had basically already hung up on him oh my god this is such a shoddy plan – it’s not even making the most of what he CAN do in his situation

* * *

A bit of back and forth about parenting as well. Crowley is sort of a John mirror this season as well (if we take all the layers of subtext as VERY distinct from each other) and he is basically going to “parent” Dean back to demonhood… Right now he’s struggling with parenting Gavin, and muses on if Dean was nice to John. It parallels Gavin and Dean as Crowley’s two children – Dean as the “better” son doing everything Crowley asks (except for not coming here in the first place – he’s also telling Gavin not to get on the boat for his own good but at Crowley’s expense right now)

* * *

> ABADDON  
> Little trick I learned from Henry Winchester. 

Crowley’s wtf expression is great here. No one tells him nuffin

* * *

Appreciating the difference in their backgrounds here. We even see Cas and his car, but Gadreel approaches humbly on foot. I guess he has a crumbling façade? Cas has a bit more of an imposing and clean put together skyline, but in the end he’s still parked next to the skip on the exact same ground as Gadreel :P

* * *

> GADREEL  
> Even though you and I are on opposite sides in this situation, I believe there must be honor, even in matters of war.

ILY 

> CASTIEL  
> Obviously, Metatron has someone inside my camp. It’s how he knew we were meeting. Just fighting fire with fire. Consider my offer.

ILY MORE – you really go all out. I mean you could have found some other dumb angel like Ezra but nah, you have a weird personal connection to Metatron’s MAIN DUDE who has MURDERED SO MANY ANGELS and you’re like you know what if we need a turncoat I want that guy

* * *

Metatron and Cas warring over their playing pieces >.>

* * *

Ah, that final 10 minutes of a Buckleming episode feel. Dean tells Sam to go hang out in the basement, taking control in that “this is a dictatorship” way. He MIGHT want to protect Sam (from himself as much as anything) but I sort of feel there’s a lot of guilt there that he knows he can’t really stop himself at this point, and he’s kind of craving the violence and he just doesn’t want Sam to SEE him this way…

* * *

*long sequence where Dean busts in and doesn’t talk* Not at all like 12x11. (I’m still fixated on that. This is obviously the much darker example, but I think 12x11 might be fridge horror, realising how MUCH of a sameness these two instances have to each other, and what was going on with Dean here, and how he’s stripped down to a killer – just the next time a goofy one who gives a thumbs up…)

* * *

Weirdly amused by this

Reminds me of 9x17 and those souls in a jar except it’s just an empty water cooler bottle in an empty basement. Sam looking in all the wrong places to save his brother’s soul right now…

* * *

Blah blah Dean fighting Abaddon. The first implication Dean didn’t need the feather to fly, in like, implicit stuff they show, that he resists, has the glowy Mark, and force-pull the Blade back to him. The Blade is just a useful perk of having the Mark; the Mark is oh so much more.

(And Dean, probably quite rightfully tbh, never explores these powers ever again aside from enjoying the cheap healing while he’s a demon)

* * *

Anyway Sam misses everything except for Dean over-powering Abaddon’s push one final time and killing her.

You can always tell when they are worried something wasn’t dramatic enough so they totally ruin her death with the most OTT dying effects ever – even Eve and her ridiculous close up cuts back and forth was at least doing more than floating there screaming and she melted slower. I mean… It’s close in badness.

If Abaddon had died fast like a regular demon but maybe brighter and shoutier Dean’s reaction to keep stabbing would also look far more natural as he wouldn’t freeze frame with her, and could just kinda keep on going, as if it WASN’T satisfying enough and he WANTED the entire minute of her suspended in the air screeching.

* * *

Oh well. This show is sometimes terrible, and ends an interesting female character’s arc so terribly I literally have not had ANYTHING to comment on about her plans, what else she was up to, just, in general, how she’s been doing :P

* * *

AFTER she goes down it’s all really well acted though. Oh Dean. You’ve really fucked up this time :P Stupid death aside, it’s a great moment for showing how out of control he truly is and how completely in over his head with this power he is.

Which makes the way he begins to resist it in season 10 that much more powerful, because I think the Mark only ever gets stronger, Dean just gets better and better at resisting it. As I’ve said a few times, he’s remarkably much more human underneath while he’s a demon than he is at the end of season 10

* * *

> DEAN  
> I just still can’t get over the fact that Crowley has a son. (to CROWLEY) How’s he doing, by the way?

Dean appears to have got over it remarkably easy since this is the first thing he says. Conceal don’t feel… repress all that bloody murder under frivolous distractions :P

* * *

Nice of him to ask though I guess.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> If the lad goes back, his destiny is to board a ship bound for America. That ship went down in a storm. All hands were lost. He had one chance in this world to change his life. You want that to all end in tragedy?

Yes, they know… They were there in 6x04

* * *

Unless it didn’t HAPPEN

* * *

> SAM  
> The lore all says the same thing – you change any one thing in the past, the ripple effect impacts everything that follows.
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Please. No one bends the rules like you two bend the rules. He’s one misfit kid. He impacts no one.
> 
> SAM  
> You don’t bend that rule, okay? You don’t. We’ll take him back to the bunker, figure out the spell. That’s the way it’s got to be.

COSMIC CONSEQUENCES

* * *

I can’t believe they even fuckin’ said it and then literally never revisited it. Was Gavin’s actor busy? Could they not just recast him? 10x04 “oh shit now all that drama’s over, we need to find Crowley’s son”

* * *

Feeeeeelings

[Originally posted by a-hunter-angel](https://tmblr.co/Z1xPZk22h6wyp)

I always forget how funny that is

* * *

Crowley talking about having a trace of humanity in him and Gavin never being used for Crowley’s ulterior motives is meant to confirm Crowley well and truly is changed. Goes off and picks up Dean as well at the end of the season (who he was watching very curiously and chatting to while Dean was in his murderbloodlust state, as per usual with his fascination with Marked!Dean).

* * *

> GAVIN  
> The ship went down? Well, that’s a good fit with the rest of my life.

I have become genuinely attached to him and I think it’s because he’s useless, cute, probably gay, and I hate this episode so much because I just want him to be dropped in the ocean where he belongs.

* * *

> GAVIN  
> So this is goodbye, then?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Yes. Forever. Unless, of course, I catch you smoking, in which case, I’ll smack you stupid.
> 
> GAVIN  
> Goodbye, then. And thank you…father.

Wonder if Crowley really has kept in contact – or kept tabs on him. Might be safer for everyone involved if he cuts ties and NO demons know that Crowley has a son alive in the 21st century who Crowley is too attached to for his own good…

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Goodbye, Gavin. Oh, uh… Don’t go mentioning that whole “Prince of Hell” thing. Doesn’t play too well in most circles.

PFFT

* * *

I honestly think Crowley’s face is enough to add in the retcon that he’s not just looking out for Gavin or trying to avoid embarrassment about this but also… yeah :P

* * *

Oooh I forgot Dean actually explains. In my defence, it’s a Buckleming episode but normally it would be a bit more subtle – at least it gives them a few great soundbites for later recaps:

> DEAN  
> First time I touched that Blade…I knew. I knew that I wouldn’t be stopped. I knew I would take down Abaddon and anything else if I had to. And it wasn’t a hero thing. You know, it wasn’t… It was just calm. I knew. And I had to go it alone, Sammy.

If you’re not horrified about the little journey Dean goes on there… A+ acting. He’s horrified and fascinated and guilty in turn.

* * *

In possibly one of the most terrible Winchester Miscommunication Moments filed under this very specific bracket, Sam misinterprets this as being about some sort of petty brother thing they’ve been arguing about all season and Dean lets him:

> SAM  
> Oh. Of course. So it was just another time where you had to protect me.
> 
> DEAN  
> You could’ve gotten nabbed by Abaddon, and she could’ve bargained her way out. We couldn’t afford to screw this up.

Dean giving more “normal” reasons why he’d leave Sam out.

Sam then, tentatively, and having ignored all the huge neon signs so far that tell him he should NOT be this tentative and shouldn’t have been for many episodes, suggests,

> SAM  
> Look…I’m glad it worked out, okay? I am. And I’m glad the Blade gives you strength or calm or whatever, but, Dean, I got to say… I’m starting to think the Blade is doing something else, too.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah? Like what?
> 
> SAM  
> I don’t know. Like, something to  _you._  

He might just be careful for Dean’s sake, but there’s been a real pattern so far of him ignoring neon signs about Dean for one reason or another – maybe a lot of performing Dean related issues on Sam’s end of struggling to interpret him and known when he’s being deflected from for REALL serious reasons and when Dean’s just being Dean… Maybe he just doesn’t want to accept it because it’s terrifying and also BROTHER KILLING CURSE hey and you’re the brother :P

* * *

Anyway Dean vetoes Sam suggesting Dean chill with the whole blade thing, with a simple “no” once again dictating what they do, and that’s that. Onwards to 9x22 and all THAT nonsense…

* * *

Although I suspect the next episode I watch will be 12x13 and we’ll deal with a ton of nonsense for other, less fun reasons. >.> Here is a blank space for future me of Friday afternoon to scream in horror:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

D:

[edit: wandering by a couple of weeks later to add a tag I forgot. Saw this blank space. Now know I should have left a much bigger one. I am pretty sure I rewatched this episode and Buckleming did not :P]


	22. 9x22

God, the end of season 9 was some quality nonsense. Pretty sure I never recovered.

* * *

We’re finally entering the “I have literally never re-watched these episodes for any reason” part of the show that extends from here -> 11x01 so this will be a trip.

* * *

The recap proves 9x21 only needed to be 30 seconds long. Beautiful.

* * *

Aw, crap, I forgot about Tessa. (like, wilfully forgetting. She and Billie are hanging out on a beach somewhere groaning about Winchesters being the worst) Thanks, Dabb. 

I suppose reapers were already retconned to hell, and you just went with a friendly face, as well as the really obvious step that Tessa vs Dean’s descent is an important step, as much as having vampire episodes to parallel to it. If you assume what you’re writing is the most important stage of his journey so far and worth spending Tessa on (I’m paused at the ice cream shop awful mom demanding “10 blueberries, not 9, not 11″ which a lot of people read as commenting on how many seasons they wanted and surprise - Dabb ends up taking over in 11 when Carver drifts away very clearly feeling this sentiment in his bones… Anyway, feeling this was building up to some great end, you can use up one of the most significant characters on the show just like killing Death at the end of 10 (though I still wonder if that was spite for this same reason :P)…) then it makes sense… Tessa has been linked to some really significant stages in Dean’s journey on the sort of really grim path that you can kind of see was always leading here, when you take Dean in broad strokes and look from current canon back at the past. As I know a lot of people did, really taking stock of Dean’s cumulative trauma that starts to make this seem inevitable by season 2 – hi Tessa, the stuff in 2x03 in Cain’s house about Dean being a killer, selling his soul – and it just keeps getting worse and worse until he’s given all he has, like, by season EIGHT.

In 2x01 Dean wanted to go with Tessa and NOT become a vengeful ghost, but not before struggling hugely with his duty and the fact there was still a battle to fight. She was ready to Valkyrie him off the battlefield before John intervened. In 4x15 he talks about how he felt her as something he’d been missing all that time - the sense he should have moved on, making their conversations in 2x01 clearly a factor in him selling his soul, and feeling he had to make use of his death/resurrection/pass it on to someone more deserving of that life, in his eyes. In 6x11 it goes back to his nature as a killer by her helping him be Death, and to learn how the natural order works (and I am fairly sure Dean declares he’s the natural order at some point while being a demon)… Now Dean’s confronting a whole bundle of mortality stuff, from having to die/wanting to die to not become what is heavily paralleled to being a vengeful ghost AND his nature as a killer is explored in this arc, and Tessa is more appropriate than any other character to vouch for the natural order being fucked. Dean’s wrongness parallels with the wrongness of the universe (because he’s the centre of the universe) and both are only truly put right in 11x23. Tessa is one of those keystone characters who can hold this whole narrative together.

* * *

Anyway, ice cream shop scene: angels and food - this angel enjoying an ice cream is a subject covered in a lot of meta. Highlights: angels & sweet tooth, check. Just eating it because a kid would and she’s playing along (see also: playground angel), check. Fridge horror of SPN being really wary of killing kids but forget about vessels when blowing up a little girl, check. (Though there was another little human boy there who died too)

The angel that comes in to kill her is blatantly wearing a trenchcoat in order to mimic Cas because he’s one of the “For Castiel!!” bombers, we discover in a minute. For now, the visual association does the trick. Useful to consider that Metatron among many other things, gives us a handy code for saying the character in the trenchcoat is ALWAYS meant to be a Cas parallel, which is handy for 10x13, the episode with the wife in a trenchcoat and the husband with the blatantly Mark paralleled vengeful ghost stuff. 

Side note: still not sure they didn’t swerve from a grace cure/power of love resolution to all that.

Side side note: it looks so dodgy here on this guy, but it does suggest Cas wearing the trenchcoat with no shirts under it, which I think is an image Dean would like.

* * *

The number of times I have watched the following short scene is absolutely astronomical, to the point where you could show me the first frame of Sam lying on the bed on top of the covers fully dressed with a gun under his pillow and I’d just be like “9x22, Stairway to Heaven, opening scene, T-minus 20 seconds to “weird, dorky little guy…””… probably not the date and time the promo dropped but like, wow, this was an event :P

(Theoretically I had been existing in fandom for 3-4 episodes at this point but I’d been so bemused about the whole thing that 9x21 was the first time I engaged, and only understood what the promo pics were AFTER and why people were talking about the promo scene and so on. This time I was primed and ready to go.)

* * *

Has anyone ever tallied all the Destiel nonsense in this episode?

1: “I called Cas” 

(”We got in like 2 hours ago” There’s 2 options here - Dean only just phoned Cas after restlessly pacing for an hour and 55 minutes, had a brief exchange wondering if anything was up, and immediately got the news something was, without exchanging any more details (the lack of talking about any more plot stuff gets more and more obvious as the episode continues and not just because Cas didn’t feel like sharing). Noticeable that even though Dean is the one who phoned Cas, Cas is the one who suddenly had something urgent for them to do. 

OR Dean phoned Cas up to talk to him to try and take the edge off and was having one of those moments like in 9x10 where he asks Cas how he’s doing just to humour him, and sat through a 1hr and 55 mins lecture on some bizarre ancient history/natural world thing Cas thought would be soothing for Dean to hear, until one of Cas’s minions decided he’d been on the phone long enough and the bad news about the attack had to be brought to his attention immediately and interrupted him - Dean bothered Cas until he was allowed in because he wanted something to do)

(I guess there’s always that Dean phoned Cas, Cas had been planning to keep it to himself and deal with it, but Dean guessed something was up, and bothered Cas into talking to him and inviting him to help)

Anyway! This was I recall fairly exciting to confirm that Dean and Cas even talked on the phone with each other off-screen sometimes, because remember what I said last episode about us being fucking spoiled? This is another one of those things where Dean phoning Cas genuinely seemed to be exciting at the suggestion they’d been having an OFF-SCREEN conversation rather than these 5 second one sided calls we saw on screen. Especially that Dean called him of his own volition when he didn’t have a gun to his head or anything better to do.

These days Dean walks into any old scene after having had a long chat with Cas where we only hear the summary as he hangs up. The world has changed :P

* * *

2: “… he’s a weird, dorky little guy.”

Honestly since 9x22 entered the Deep Past of the show, we mostly just quote that part on its own. It’s funnier in context. Dean starts aggressive, dismissively says “he’s a weird guy,” and this is all in a camera angle from the back of his head. And THEN we cut to Dean’s face and oh - oh no, Dean. You’re in deep, honey. You’re like 99% demon waiting to go, angry about everything and then you start talking about Cas for 1 second and you just… Stare into the far distance thinking about how dorky and smol your BFF is with that far-off daze in your entire expression. Then suddenly realise what you’re doing and snap back to reality with a “But!” like Cas really has like 1 redeeming feature, which is his army of angels, overcompensating for that weird lapse. 

Sam, of course has not had enough coffee for this.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Because he is a weird guy, okay? He’s a weird, dorky, little guy. But he happens to have an army of Angels behind him, and, even though I hate to say it, if we’re gonna take a shot at Metatron, they might be useful.

This also sounds very ambiguous about if Dean thinks Cas is useful or his army is - he’s affecting a huge distance to him and later we can see much more clearly when he’s arguing with Cas that he cares about him and is worried about the army, and what might happen to Cas if he has to play Commander too long… Right here and now it certainly could suggest he barely thinks Cas will be any help, but the resources he’s scavenged might be.

That’s especially if you don’t read too much into Dean’s tangent about Cas being weird and dorky.

* * *

Meanwhile, all the times I mentioned Sam not getting concerned fast enough:

> SAM  
> No. In all fairness, we didn’t decide. You did. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Okay, I decided that a hockey stick that can kill anything might come in handy, so sue me. 
> 
> SAM  
> How many times have we been around this block? Magic that powerful comes at a price, and right now we don’t know what that price is.

NOW he’s arguing with Dean deciding things but in a way it’s now all set in stone because he’s decided while Sam was still not taking a strong stance on it. Not blaming Sam because this probably would have all happened one way or another, but he could have been a LOT more prepared/done more research/begun lining up cures sharpish. Instead it’s all snuck up on him and he’s only getting concerned when Dean’s waaay past the point of no return. He probably should have been resisting even looking for the First Blade, instead of helping.

* * *

> SAM  
> And I’m glad, honestly. I’m not saying we bury the thing. I’m saying we just save it for when we really need it.

Also he still doesn’t quite get how bad it is.

* * *

Still wonder if Dean Force-pulled the Blade into his bag.

Or if he made a really terrible excuse about needing to go to the loo before they left and doubled back and Sam just… was not… suspicious enough.

* * *

SPEARS AND AGUILERA

Cas tries.

He’s probably already Beyonce here, but we don’t get a chance to find out what it was until much later.

* * *

Probably something to say about the implication that Cas only realised this after the pop culture download, and made a misinterpretation (a harmless one) of the text to a sort of wacky result. Not sure if it fits with the fan commentary from last episode and definitely way less pointed, especially since Sam and Dean still roll with it and don’t kick up a stink about Cas getting it wrong beyond asking him in a really bemused way (Sam) and offering a “wow” from Dean who despite “weird dorky little guy” is not really in the best place to appreciate Cas being adorable. They don’t correct him and turn it into a whole thing about not using obviously girly/pop music aliases (honestly couldn’t tell you which one Dean is more offended by but I’d lean towards pop music :P).

Anyway it WORKED and they’re on the crime scene, so it was a valid reading after all… I think really it belongs with the writing thread of this season, especially with Cas struggling to catch a clue with subtext – Mittens was watching 9x10 on TV earlier and asked if Cas even knew that Dean was blaming Gadreel for making him kick Cas out, and I figure not likely if Dean doesn’t directly say it, especially if Cas still feels he doesn’t belong like 3 years later… He has a bit of a wider pool of info to draw from but he’s still not grasping all the nuance of pop culture of what it means or why people like it… Same box as him not getting WHY a Death Star reference at the appropriate moment.

* * *

Anyway I’ve had it paused way too long because Cas is standing in this really powerful pose and honestly he knows he’s on borrowed time as much as Dean does and this episode points it out loudly, but I still feel like Cas’s last vestiges of denial about that are also the last time we really see Cas “OK” after this except for maybe 5 minutes between the end of 10x18 and 10x22.

* * *

I had an attention span fail and left it paused way too long on Metatron posing in a knock off of Cas’s coat TRYING to look all imposing and really failing. I do love that it’s a knock off of the knock off coat, and further silently tells us the connection between the now 3 trenchcoat-ed angels we’ve seen in all of like 4 minutes of episode.

I think before I paused I was about to type something about it being left ambiguous about which angel it was who was left when Cas mentions there was only 1 angel in the ice cream place, and the way he indicates that it was one of his angels is really understated as well – I had glanced away and thought he literally changed the subject out of awkwardness. But no, he doesn’t realise his angel is the aggressor here, or that they were no longer “his” angel. Of course we’d believe since we saw what happened that Cas’s angel would be the little girl, the innocent in that encounter… Because we’d never think Cas could do this, although the episode has set itself up to be really ambiguous about Cas and his army and if they’re good or not.

* * *

I also like “this is abhorrent even for him” and then cut to Metatron wearing the trenchcoat – like this really is the biggest violation :P

I love though that this shows that Metatron attempted to be GOD and that wasn’t good enough and now he’s sort of got more of a measure on the angel stuff than he did at the end of season 8, having been out of the loop forever and probably only latched onto Cas because of the obvious chatter in Heaven of him going rogue at the time they clued Metatron in that it was time to listen, he’s now trying to ape Cas instead, seeing how he looks in a trenchcoat and petty and bitter about Cas’s popularity and sex appeal.

And he’s EMBARRASSED about it. And it gives Gadreel another reason to really judge Metatron (oh the beauty of his end of season faces…) and he’s contemplating being turncoat on Metatron already – he at least sounds sincere to argue with Metatron that they’re losing and Cas’s army is better than theirs despite having the high ground… But this also makes a compelling list of reasons to demonstrate he’s losing faith in Metatron and is starting to realise he’s as much of a loser as he seems (the bowling angel interaction has a lot of this as well) – especially Metatron clearly idolising Cas as cooler than him, well… Gadreel’s really starting to get the message already.

Plus, in 9x18 he complained if it was Metatron’s plan for him to be caught, which was the first real crack between them… now:

> GADREEL  
> No, we – we’re losing, Metatron. Castiel’s followers outnumber us. And while they haven’t gone on offense, they have proven capable. They stopped you from killing him, and me, for example. 
> 
> METATRON  
> I told you, we had our shot with operation Lee Harvey, and we took it. I gave the orders. You weren’t to be harmed. 
> 
> GADREEL  
> You had me followed.

Because again Metatron is using Gadreel as a pawn in his game and not telling him what he’s doing while constructing these narratives about it.

> METATRON  
> Yeah, and you met with the enemy… In secret. What is that old line about sins and stones? 
> 
> GADREEL  
> He spoke. He lied. And I listened. That’s it. But I serve heaven. I serve you.

Gadreel looks SO guilty and then he is super defensive. Again, knowing he doesn’t even do as Cas suggested and inform on Metatron but outright defects to them by the end of the episode you can see he’s already considering the offer….

* * *

> METATRON  
> Good. Don’t forget it. I mean, I-I don’t get this whole Cas lovefest, either.

Metatron deflects back to bitching about Cas, again projecting a bit much because he OBVIOUSLY gets it… I mean he could just be trying on the trenchcoat to see what the big deal is or if it gives him magic powers of sex appeal and likeability, but he was clearly checking himself out, and this whole episode really is Metatron’s jealousy and disdain for Cas in equal measures. It’s become, to HIM a petty rivalry for Heaven, while it’s a sort of urgent mission for Cas approached like every other horrible mission he has to do to just get some freakin’ rest… Like, Metatron, do you know WHY Cas never read a book? He’s been too fucking busy tidying up after assholes like you :P

And of course it’s the huge example of the personal vs impersonal. He’s in love with humanity/it was all for Dean Winchester. Metatron makes the proclamation about humanity, and then seems to go after humanity next episode, but it clearly was a lure for Dean, a trap Metatron set. He didn’t really care about all the rest, he just wanted to get at Cas and make it PERSONAL. The pettiness we see here is probably the best scene to explain Metatron’s motivations, such as they are. He wants to tell this big story but it’s all caught up on the characters and he has a personal vendetta to tear Cas down.

(With Dean’s upcoming reminder about Cas and power going to his head, that I seem to recall is in the scene at the HQ of Cas’s army coming up next, there’s a reminder of season 6, and I wonder if this is sort of commentary on Cas’s treatment there, being built up and torn down, but this time Cas resists. Especially with the repeated sentiment of Cas doing it all for Dean, which was his clearly stated motivation in 6x20 when he talked to Dean… Hm. Never considered Metatron as a retroactive Gamble parallel as well, although that is kinda petty rather than the self-mockery of the useless showrunner which I feel has been the trademark since day 1 when Carver called his writing the work of some marshmallow :P)

* * *

> METATRON  
> and still – still, they’re choosing him over me. I mean, sure, he’s cute. And Castiel has this simple…charm. He’s like a mentally deficient puppy. But I’m lovable. And funny. I made God laugh – twice!
> 
> GADREEL  
> You’re the one who asked him to lead an army. 
> 
> METATRON  
> Well, I didn’t think he’d be good at it.

This is just… perfect. Poor old Metatron :P Now with 11x20 I’m inclined to feel a tiiiny bit more sorry for him, especially because God really didn’t think he was that special. But he’s clinging to these ideas about himself that he’s so much better than he actually is, when he’s the most jumped-up character ever. I mean Cas being God at least had some serious dignity and terror involved. Metatron’s just… rubbish :P

* * *

(I love him of course. Ahhh what a brilliant character)

* * *

Anyway he sees a really surface version of Cas, one that leads him to drastically underestimate him; he had set him up to be a useless rival, one he could crush, but Cas’s appeal despite EVERYTHING with his history, still draws the angels to him. Inclined to think it’s more because in a “Cas or Metatron” scenario the angels are like, you know what, Cas probably isn’t that bad after all…

* * *

> METATRON  
> And I have to make a good impression. I know. I’ve got a plan. 
> 
> GADREEL [motioning to the trench coat]  
> It’s not that, is it? 
> 
> METATRON  
> Shut up!

Yeah, really convincing the other guy in the choice between the badass trenchcoat angel and the posturing angel wrapping himself up in a trenchcoat pretending to be cool :P It’s good commentary on politicians claiming to have all the same traits as their rivals to win their voters over to them.

Gadreel has like, 0 faith in Metatron’s charisma and it’s hilarious. He really is at breaking point even before the meeting…

* * *

HANNAH!

“Commander!”

“Ugh, it’s just creepy.”

Shut up, Dean, have you seen the rest of the subtext in this scene? :P I should probably file that under

3: Dean’s immediate jealousy of Hannah, which is a permanent feature of how he relates to her, right through to the last time she’s directly mentioned to him.

* * *

This episode is a great case study in the opening 10 minutes of Sam and Dean reacting ALMOST the same but not, and Dean’s reactions being way more Cas focused. Again, “I love you/I love all of you” – Sam is clearly weirded out by the angels and when “Benjamin” takes the box of evidence from him he has a serious Sam raised eyebrows expression. Sam asking about roll call he has a REALLY weirded out judgemental face about angel behaviour.

4: Dean’s reaction about “Commander” COULD be about how the angels are all weird but he makes it weird about CAS and himself and weird sex references in comparison to how Sam is judging like, the entire social order here:

> SAM  
> Uh, roll call? You hold, uh, roll call? 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> They like to hear me say their names. 
> 
> DEAN  
> I know a couple of women like that.

That same aggressively deflecting comment which I think can be filed under Dean’s jealousy of Hannah since she’s the one who brings it up and therefore “roll call” seems to be a thing between her and Cas, this “likes to hear me say their names” thing and he turns and announces that, innocent of the innuendo. Too much for Dean to handle – he’s canonically got the most dirty mind ever.

So feeling like Cas and the angels have some sort of borderline creepy cult going on and that they’re all literally lining up to bang Dean’s favourite angel… He sort of snaps back about it, revealing how he really feels about this – worth bearing in mind for a little way down the line where he openly accuses Cas of it being a cult since he doesn’t sexualise it so much then, but this is all centred around Hannah and Cas.

* * *

Checking Josiah’s recent purchases is quite amusing –

aside from the recent Gas n Sip, the transactions show he has been clothes shopping on the same day, probably buying a nice new set of duds to join Metatron’s team. He only in like the last 4 days went to that same shop while working for Cas still.

(Ongoing squeeing about Cas’s army – he knows their names, and the names of their vessels and where those vessels are FROM… They have definitely been having group circles where they share stuff and chat. Who knows where Cas picked that up from but it goes with the same stuff as him letting them all have a Friday night off and the going to the bar in 9x21 :P)

Within the last NINE days Josiah (and I am assuming it was him and that he hadn’t been with Cas’s army literally THREE days especially as he went to the same clothes place both times) also went to a deli and the cinema, and a few days before that a grocery store and car parts warehouse.

I wonder what on earth he was doing, but this poor guy’s family are going to have a hell of a time building a picture of what happened to him when they’re trying to track him down once they realise he’s missing :P

* * *

“Benjamin” is reassuringly called “red shirt angel” in this transcript so I guess wherever they got the intel about his name from for 9x21′s transcript, it never really stuck and is unofficial :P

Anyway

5:

> DEAN  
> And that’s how we do things in the pros.

This is addressed directly to Hannah… Honestly starting to think I need to make a gifset just of Dean being weird AT Hannah in relation to Cas because he is SO fucking jealous.

* * *

Like, the Dean Is Jealous Of Hannah series is probably something I SHOULD have delved into in season 10 because around 10x18 I floated the idea and a few people picked it up but there were also comments on the post with the most circulation that it seemed like a real stretch to explain Dean’s behaviour in 10x18 when Cas blames Hannah for everything instead of Sam to be read that way… I backed it up with 10x03 but I really did not think to explore this episode and suggest it had been their dynamic from the start, and as I said somewhere else recently, Cas x Hannah was already being teased from 9x18 with the look she gave him at the end, and this makes it a much more blatant romantic squabble of “me or him” when Hannah tries to make Cas punish Dean… But people were kind of reluctant to discuss it at the time – people were already on edge over the potential love interest thing when it was announced she’d be back in season 10, and then the first part of season 10 happened and by 10x07 a huge wank storm blew in with the promo & kiss…

And like I said I have not been back to any of this since they aired, or at least since before season 10 for these episodes, so… No later context ever applied to them in my head along with all the biases and stuff we talked about later to look at again >.>

* * *

Also I’ve never watched this on a big screen in DVD quality instead of crappy streams and tiny gifs, so I am very amused at the discovery that Dean is wearing a black plaid tie.

* * *

> SAM  
> So, this was some kind of hit? 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I don’t know.
> 
> DEAN  
> Stop saying you don’t know.

6: Sam’s still off to the side somewhere. Dean and Cas are talking face to face with very close camera angles as if in a private conversation. Just to be clear about how Sam having the line leading into this is at a literal remove from them. :P

7: Dean’s voice breaking when he says “stop saying you don’t know” as if with fear, betraying his first ACTUAL vulnerability for like… weeks. Look how far we’ve come since 8x22: Dean’s built Cas right back up and now no longer expects the worse immediately (“Sounds like him”) but is terrified of a reality where Cas isn’t actually in control and that his dangerous angel army is crumbling from underneath him (honestly, how much of Dean menacing Cas’s peeps through this episode while doing the interrogations is from his fear of terrible stuff happening to Cas as a result of this? Again like with knowing Gadreel defects, with hindsight though he’s angry here, Cas is a SOFT SPOT for Dean and it’s blatantly shown at the end.

* * *

Aaand then Dean gets angry, because that fear is too much and he has to move away from it and since this is Mark!Dean he just… crumbles into anger. Gosh I love Jensen’s acting.

> CASTIEL  
> You can’t think I would allow something like this. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Cas, I know you try to be a good guy, okay? I do. You try. But what you got here, this is a a freakin’ cult.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Dean. 
> 
> DEAN  
> And the last time you had this kind of juice, you did kill humans and angels, and you did nothing but lie to me and Sam about it the whole damn time!

It’s like he works through it from fear, to expressing concern about the cultishness, to suddenly dragging in everything and NOW we have our 8x22 moment of Dean bringing up Cas’s season 6 drama again when he’s most hurt/scared for Cas. And then he moves to the personal baggage and why it hurt him in the first place. Cas is not lying about ANTHING here, but Dean fears he might be and that’s enough to make him angry because EVERYTHING makes him angry, and again he lashes out and hurts him, even though he built things up better with Cas - especially by being abruptly dragged down from his own high horse by hurting Cas in 9x03. He had to deal with that every episode he saw him from then on until they were square in 9x10 (a moment when they shared this equality before Dean obviously moved on to his new life phase and wrecked everything they’d built and WAS the one keeping secrets from Cas by not telling him about the Mark :P)

* * *

8: the look Hannah and “Benjamin” exchange while Dean and Cas old-married-couple argue in front of them

* * *

This is also much worse from Cas’s POV knowing he is genuinely innocent, and having Dean get all worked up and angry and levelling these accusations at him. As I said – very narrow window of Cas being OK and like 10x22 wrecks them completely, Dabb does seem to be responsible for their yearly awfulness three years running and it’s always Cas who takes the brunt of it, as this is the point in the story it seems that Dean and Cas HAVE to be destabilised for drama. 11x23 of course completely makes up for it and I wonder if Dabb ever felt bad about having to write these episodes at the end of the season where they fall out/Dean is horrible to Cas :P Remembering he wrote and then subverted this pattern does make me happy. Anywho Cas gets angry in the next scene as far as I remember but

* * *

9: Cas’s horror that Dean doesn’t trust him, after everything, and probably missing that bit entirely where Dean’s voice broke because CAS is horrified about the bomber and the last thing he needs is Dean turning on him too and going off on one when all the angels in the room can hear and Hannah and “Benjamin” as our representatives of Cas’s army as a whole are equally horrified and suspicious of the bomber…

* * *

10:

> SAM  
> Can we, uh – can we take this somewhere else, guys? 
> 
> [They enter CASTIEL’s private office] 
> 
> SAM  
> Will you stow the baggage, Dean.  

* * *

> SAM  
> Look, we’ve got a case. Let’s work it. Cas, did you know the angel in that video?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Yes. His name was Oren. He was a new recruit. He worked in community outreach.

Hm, Dabb vs cars here – Cas already showed he knew the dead angel and it WOULD have been Oren he was talking about because they didn’t know Ester was there because she was vaporised. This really just adds to my theory about the ambiguity of which one was Cas’s angel there, because this is an OOC clarification for our purposes that Cas WAS talking about Oren in that scene. Like, that he knew it was deliberately so ambiguous it needed an over-clarification here.

* * *

God Sam is still so pissed off… He really gets fed up with how distracted they are :P

Finally he gets them all calmed down by singling Cas out to level ALL the questions at… And he nearly gets Cas back on track before

> CASTIEL  
> So, what do we do now? 
> 
> DEAN  
> Well, you don’t do jack.

Dean has valid concerns but phrased COMPLETELY wrong by still accusing Cas of running the cult by comparing him to Charlie Manson. Again you can see his ACTUAL concerns and worry about Cas under the surface but it’s all filtered through this Mark of Cain douchiness, while in practice he’s mostly just upsetting Cas :P 

He IS right that Cas investigating his own angels would set them on edge and Cas would miss stuff because he’d desperately WANT every angel to be loyal…

The REAL solution to this episode would have been for Sam to stay because he’s neutral and not angry and looking for something to rough up. I can’t believe I thought that first and THEN that it would mean Dean n Cas got to go have a little adventure together, but there you go, apparently I’m more invested in telling Dean he’s being a dick than shipping him with Cas right now :P

* * *

Anyway I know I squealed about it last rewatch post but here is where Cas says he has angels working in “community outreach” and I just love him so much, okay. Even when he can’t personally do it, he delegates angels to go help. I think if Cas, OUR Cas, got to run Heaven, he would implement a ton of stuff like this using ALL their resources instead of sending angels to like, one local hospital. He just wants to help! 

And of course this comes in the “in love with humanity” episode, so there’s got to be an obvious demonstration of surface text Cas genuinely being good and loving humanity. Like, even beyond something as simple as saying his motivation is to stop Metatron to protect people, not to do a power grab (I think in that respect he mostly sticks with doing it because of his duty to fix his mistakes and repair Heaven) like, this is just hypothetical. I can’t remember him ever saying that, actually. It’s next episode when they find out how much of a threat Metatron might be when he stops picking on Cas, having sorted out all his angel issues, and turns around to threaten Humanity. 

But nope, the way they do this is just showing us how much Cas GENUINELY wants to help random humans, just like those other times we’ve seen him healing people to no greater purpose than just to do it.

Still, something about Cas in this episode is revealed to be un-angel-like despite this love of humanity seeming to be part of their duty… and of course in CONTEXT the choice Cas has to make and Metatron’s gloating are *already* about Dean even before he just goes and says it next episode…

* * *

Oh no Cas has photos of falling angels on his wall.

* * *

Here Cas stands up for himself where Sam doesn’t – that whole thing about it being a “dictatorship” from later – we’ve seen that already with Dean being like “no” and saying “YOU decided” and then doing his own thing. Cas is free of the co-dependency and it shows because this arc after all is meant to highlight SAM AND DEAN’S problems, and Cas is a bystander/innocent victim/friend who assists them/Colette parallel, but never directly involved in this crap.

So, compare and contrast. Dean won’t let Sam decide things for them, or to be swayed by advice he doesn’t want to hear. It’s taking him to an extreme of their dynamic, but while he may be much grumpier with Cas, this highlights that there is a difference and that it’s only between him and Sam where things are rotting and awful. Sure he’s a dick, but his voice cracks with concern. I’ve seen people argue that he just found Cas easier to manipulate (and sure Cas’s motives here to go to Colorado DON’T get in the way of anything Dean wants to do – if anything sending Sam with him means he can boss Sam around AND send them away to leave him to menace the angels in peace).

But IF you find the way in to read it as concern instead of a different tactic to control Cas (and 12x10 helps with a textual confirmation Dean is a dick when he’s a concerned and right now his dick meter is turned up to 11 – there are probably better ways I could have phrased that) then I think it makes a lot of sense that Cas would get emotionally preferential treatment in this episode, even if you approach it from him as the control subject and Sam as the real point of conflict, rather than shippy. However you shake it, though, here Cas confronts Dean angrily, and they spar a bit, but Cas stands his ground, adapts to Dean’s demands, and finds a way that suits HIM to do what HE wants around what Dean wants, and Dean just says, okay, fine, and sends Sam away.

Again, if you read Sam as the reason for Dean’s dickishness, when Cas says “because you don’t trust me” and Dean says, “no, to help”, though this has all been really charged between them, Dean’s pretty much mostly demon!Dean, is more irrational about Sam than at any other point save next episode where he just plain punches him out to have him not come with him (and last episode he “only” lied to Sam to get him to not come with him, out of concern SAM would get hurt too – his humanity is draining away and obviously killing Abaddon was the worst blow so Dean between 9x21 and 9x22 is already a radically different Dean and that’s NOT character inconsistencies) and again he does NOT want Sam with him. 

Cas offers a perfect opportunity to ditch Sam, and so Dean changes track – the fight is over for him because this has turned up and Cas standing his ground has opened a door for him… I don’t really think it is about Cas at this point any more, to the point where Cas asking if Dean doesn’t trust him throws him a bit, because the entire time while he’s been having this stupid argument about cults and Godstiel references, it’s NEVER been because he doesn’t TRUST Cas though it sure sounded like it. He’s a dick and he’s worried about Cas and also, did I mention he’s a total dick right now :P

* * *

CAS’S CAAAR

> CASTIEL  
> Abaddon is dead. 
> 
> SAM  
> And then some. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Oh, no. 
> 
> SAM  
> Okay. Um…Ominous.

See also: Dean and Cas didn’t talk about anything significant, see also: Sam is not worried enough part however many of infinity this season

It takes Cas’s OUTSIDE view (again, co-dependency stuff) to get some context to understand how worried he should be. I don’t even think it’s Cas’s “expert” advice because I think Cas knows about as much as Crowley here only unlike Crowley he’s not hoping for a “miracle”. I think it’s just literally the fact someone who Sam trusts who is NOT Dean can comment on the fact that Dean does not seem to be doing well…

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Does Dean seem different to you? 
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah. Lately, he seems to be…amped up –you know, on edge.

Cas trusting SAM’S expert advice on Dean, his self-worth nowhere near as bad as it will get, but still Dean’s words get to him and I don’t think he entirely trusted that Dean’s anger was entirely coming from the Mark, and not that Cas had fucked up somehow (HE HASN’T. HE’S PERF. HE’S LITERALLY DOING NOTHING WRONG AND EVERYONE ELSE RUINS EVERYTHING FOR HIM TODAY)

Sorry, wait, I’m not a bitter Cas fan, I just… *follows him with blankets and a cup of cocoa*

I think it’s because they’re talking in his car and I get emotional.

> CASTIEL  
> He does seem angry. I mean, he’s always a little angry, but now it seems like…more. I think a part of him actually believed that I ordered those angels to, you know…Sam, you don’t, do you?

At the end of the episode Dean clears this up for Cas – and again, despite his rabid “THIS IS A DICTATORSHIP” to Sam, I feel like the difference is not that he’s putting on a face for Cas but it’s meant to show how far gone he is with SAM, so I trust him to be genuine about this, to apologise and say, no, he didn’t think that. Dean and Cas, weirdly, are good for pretty much all of season 9 right through to the end of season 10 and keeping Cas at an arm’s length from the Mark of Cain stuff means so much more to me with hindsight. >.> I mean I wasn’t all that bitter about it at the time for this season but now we have all the hindsight, the way these two emotional arcs ran against each other, yes it is a total relief that Dean never got all aggro against Cas until pretty much every shred of his humanity, including the part that protects children, was gone (and he  _still_  didn’t kill Cas, despite how monstrously cruel that fight was). So with hindsight, I’m absolutely supporting that Dean didn’t think this about Cas.

Cas however, thinks this about Dean because he values Dean’s opinion of him, guides himself by Dean’s morals, has enough trauma and guilt about all the things Dean accused him of, and is genuinely afraid of fucking up again like that, as he repeated while clinging to “I’m not a leader” just a few episodes ago. Now he’s exercising that power as responsibly as he can, and it’s still not good enough for Dean, who freaks out about it. Cas, understandably, takes a blow to his self-esteem.

* * *

Anyway Sam and Cas bond – the start of the Adventures of Sam n Cas, having a very lovely conversation. *rubs their heads* 

They have a really nice build up to relying on each other more as Dean, the previous emotional link between them, rapidly loses his emotional stake in anything, forcing Sam and Cas to pick up the slack to keep the family together. Well, their nice moments so far this season have been sort of because Dean left, Cas just wanted to catch a word, and now because Dean set them up together so they’re not doing it deliberately, per say, but the writing is and the world they’re now in is one which is making them rely on each other and communicate. The stuff about trust last episode, with Gadreel and Cas both vouching for each other because Sam, is a great way to show all these ties and trust between them in action. Now they have meaningful conversations which aren’t about Dean! :P

(I mean this one starts about him but moves onto others stuff)

* * *

> SAM  
> No, man. Cas, listen. You got a weird thing going on back there. Those other angels, the way they stare at you, I-it’s like you’re part rock star, part L. Ron.

Sam cautions him about his followers but honestly aside from their over-the-top feeling of betrayal from Metatron’s speech, they don’t get wildly out of control – I think because Cas is a good leader not because there wasn’t time for it to fester. Of course Metatron plays off that adoration and how that sort of heightened love for a leader can quickly be turned by a sense of wrongdoing because it makes people question their OWN choices. Metatron gets to save their morality by proving Cas’s is worse, and their choice to pick Metatron comes because he saved them from following a bad leader…

And also of course Sam gives the surface text about the cult, explaining his OWN discomfort and what we’re to assume is Dean’s discomfort (hint: all the Hannah stuff says it’s not just that :P) by trying to explain that there’s just a really creepy aspect to the way the angels look at Cas. Sam WAS picking up on it, he just wasn’t jealous in the same way Dean was.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> They’ve put their faith in me. 
> 
> SAM  
> And maybe that’s the problem. I mean, people have been doing messed up crap in the name of faith – in the name of God – since forever.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Well… I’m not trying to… play God. I’m just trying to get my people home.

Cas as a religious figure – Moses this time, instead of God. Sam vs faith as well, something we rarely see surface, but he struggles with it a lot. He and Cas have both had arcs where they did the wrong thing because of misplaced faith – Sam’s ironically because he had his own righteousness about the demon blood thing being the greater good when CAS was telling him not to do it in season 4, while Cas took his resurrection as a cue of God pointing him on the right path to do what he did in season 6. This is something they KNOW.

I love Sam n Cas.

* * *

Bowling angel!

I swear they cast a really tall guy just to make Metatron look extra small. Gadreel of course, standing behind him as the hired muscle, being also twice his height.

Metatron toadies and claps at Tyrus getting a strike which he probably shouldn’t have done – he’s making himself look like the grovelling underling despite his powerful position as the one angel sitting in Heaven. He then goes on to prove he’s got really, well… wooden dialogue:

> METATRON  
> Beautiful – a symphony of wood.

What the fuck you’re the worst writer :P

I say like it’s so easy to be poetic out loud. But yeah, if they WANTED to show us Metatron being a good writer, he’d have had an eloquent piece of poetry about bowling – either ripping off something he read or actually coming up with a nice observation here. He thinks he SHOULD say something poetic in situations like this, but it immediately shows he doesn’t CARE. He has no attachment to bowling, and Tyrus is one of many angels who feels settled and happy on Earth; Metatron not only has an offer he doesn’t want to accept ever, but he also makes it clear they have no common purpose whatsoever by just not *getting* why bowling is great.

* * *

Also, the innuendo.

* * *

> TYRUS  
> Yeah, I sign on the dotted line, and, well, my people, they get a ticket upstairs. What if we don’t want to go? 
> 
> GADREEL  
> But it’s home. 
> 
> TYRUS  
> It’s boring. I mean, you – there’s nothing like this in heaven.

I LOVE the angels that change and grow and appreciate life on Earth and doing human things.

* * *

> METATRON  
> So, wait. You’re turning me down because of…bowling? 
> 
> TYRUS  
> And I like being an independent operator. And I hear you’re losing. And I hate your face.

Also that.

I love the way it goes from this abstract poetry about how great Earth is and the authenticity and the FREEDOM which he doesn’t even mention but yeah, and then when Metatron challenges him, he gets political and then personal.

* * *

Gadreel also doesn’t get it when Tyrus asks them to take a whiff –

> GADREEL  
> Old shoes and… Alcoholism? I…

But he doesn’t not get it because he sucks, like Metatron, he just has that same sort of remove from humanity and the experience that Cas sometimes has (and rapidly has less and less of when it comes to UNDERSTANDING, especially since he TRIES to understand, though the social stuff still gets him :P I like that Gadreel is one of the few angels played GENUINELY like Cas in how he relates to the world – he serves as a season 4 Cas mirror to it all to show how Cas has changed (no more apparent when they work together) and then next season Hannah does the same thing for a few episodes.)

* * *

Aaah yeah and Tyrus’s bowling team he’s infiltrated (“Jack” is the name of his vessel according to his shirt) is called “The Saints” – the whole buccaneers vs the saints thing from last episode. Metatron is going to beat him anyway because despite getting turned down he has a plan B which plays off of this:

> TYRUS  
> Please. You knife me, and all my guys will go running to Castiel. Even you’re not that stupid

Because he has one of his “Castiel” bombers come take him out instead, so he can play the victim. Metatron loooves this sort of set up >.> I’m not entirely sure he’s a buccaneer in the sense that it’s a romantic term and what he’s doing is really not terribly analogous to piracy despite how he’s taken over the ship – I think it almost suits better the angels who want to flout the rules and stay on Earth and enjoy themselves. Next season they’re the “rogue angels” Hannah wants to round up, and I bet a lot of them were in this faction.

* * *

Awww Cas in a Gas n Sip

He’s looking around like “their counter display is not very well arranged”

There’s a huge bowl of oranges on the counter for some reason

– knowing Sam, Cas and this dude don’t die, that’s really incongruous.

On the other hand this guy’s name tag says “Jeremy” and we already had the detail about the blueberries about season numbers, so maybe this is a “Carver out” warning for season 10 :P

I guess Jeremy is wearing a sort of brown plaid that’s more Dean-like than not. And he’s gonna die.

* * *

FLAGSTAFF! Dabb really has such a knack for one off characters, and also writing angels brilliantly…

> DEAN  
> What do I call you? 
> 
> FLAGSTAFF  
> My angelic name is 18 syllables long. Let’s stick with Flagstaff.

What a great way to make her instantly memorable. She’s still my fave random angel from Cas’s army, even over “Benjamin” and his friend in their snappy wardrobes :P

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about what that means about angel names, and I think it makes sense they’d have nearly unpronounceable names in their own language, but like Ents choosing to not speak Old Entish because it takes forever, they communicate with humans differently. All their names are Biblical (or well, mostly anglicised Hebrew names I think? I admit I don’t know much about this sort of thing, says the person wandering around called “Elizabeth”) or I think Latin? I mean people have made completely unrelated posts about the possible translations of “Castiel” and pointing out the “-iel” part is about God in angel names and so on and that’s from Latin. Anyway. Human languages. Easy names. Maybe Flagstaff never came to Earth before and never had to use any sort of name so this is just something she picked up – perhaps it’s where she fell to or something.

Which does mean maybe Cas has a secret unpronounceable dozens of syllables long name.

* * *

> FLAGSTAFF  
> Not funny “ha ha.” But you thinking you help people – it’s amusing. I help people. A clogged artery here, a tumor there. I do good in this world. You – you believe every problem can be solved with a gun. You play the hero, but underneath the hype, you’re a killer with oceans of blood on his hands. I hate men like you.

*muffled screaming about Dean from the pillow I have hidden behind*

Honestly this is one of those scenes I just watch through because aaaah too good to pause all over. The endless discussion of Dean as a killer – repeated a lot this season – weirdly feels more relevant because of Mary being described as a killer in the most recent episode. Of course their characters have a lot of similarity but this is Dean going as dark as he’s been to date by MILES, and he’s not done yet.

Of course there’s 2 sides to it – “Saving people” and “hunting things” and their dark arcs always come down to forgetting the saving people or putting it aside for one reason or another, and allowing the hunting to take over them. Very literally in this case. The BMoL for Mary represent this uncompromising but simple and easy promise of killing EVERYTHING. Whether she’s still going along with them or not entirely next episode, it sounds like the episode where this will really be confronted.

Hopefully before she has “oceans” of blood on her hands.

Obviously this gets to Dean because he thinks of all the innocent lives he’s hurt – maybe the vessel problem with killing demons and angels without checking and what they have to tell themselves to kill so many demons (thankfully so many helpfully demonstrated already dead or dying vessels that Sam and Dean let themselves relax about stabbing them, but obviously it still bothers them because they can’t exactly check…) That’s definitely the biggest regular blood on their hands thing they do as MOST MotW have at least a neutral to positive result when it comes to saving people, and they averted the entire apocalypse plus dealt with other giant threats to the world already. Carver era is designed to make them guilty though, with not closing the gates of Hell and so feeling an abstract guilt for everything. Cas, too, has the angel fall sprung on him.

Likely, though, when Dean’s face just gets consumed with rage, he mostly thought of the guilt he was carrying over Kevin, who personifies the blood on their hands, as it was that set of mistakes that fuelled all of Dean’s descent…

* * *

Anyway, light entertainment break as we return to the Adventures of Cas n Sam

I really miss that car. I should make a pointless gifset of it in this episode.

It has eyebrows.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Sam, this place is… radiating power. I haven’t felt anything like this since… since heaven. We have to get in here.

Warning sign – this is what Hannah told Cas about what Gabriel’s horn felt like in 9x18

That sounds wrong

* * *

“I don’t got this” don’t worry we love you anyway

Like with 9x01, I think there’s an element of Cas realising he’s just not *that* powerful, and see above: stuff I’ve been talking about him seeming okay for as long as he can. He knows he’s not exactly as powerful as he was and it’s not even his grace, but in 9x01 adapting to being human he had a lot of drama like nearly getting hit with a truck or being easily knocked out or not being able to knock others out, or needing to drink… Since Cas got grace back he’s been functioning and healing people and missing his wings but still trying to carry on like normal. Something like a door old Cas would have confidently smashed down with his weight applied liked that (assuming Metatron’s warding wouldn’t be so pointlessly good that it would keep out even a non-existent full powered angel) is suddenly an impassable object, and Cas is no longer an unstoppable force. 

Having to admit “I don’t got this” is really humbling and part of the slow unravelling of Cas that begins now, because I really haven’t caught anything like this so far and now in this episode several things all at once that start to hint Cas is not the same, and in more ways than just his grace burning out. He’s adapting to being a different sort of angel – that even when he SEEMS fine is still not that powerful – I mean, at this point or in season 12 it’s about the same difference to how powerful Cas is, and yet here he’s burning out and in season 12 he’s just wandering around being Cas.

* * *

Meanwhile, Dean is being dramatic, lurking in the rain behind a column WAY too narrow to conceal himself, yet still stepping out from behind it when he knows Tessa is coming.

* * *

[obligatory yelling about reapers but I am tired]

* * *

> DEAN  
> Howdy, Tessa. You’re supposed to be working at the hospital tonight, but when I stopped by, you were gone. So was an ambulance. Pro tip – they all have GPS.

Well, and this seems to confirm that they were grounded like angels

I think the whole “angels of Death” thing is something the show never committed to early on because they didn’t want to commit to angels, or, well, even Death. But then by the time it was more acceptable to link them up they’d developed reapers in a way that didn’t work with their ANGELS, so kind of left it alone. I think somewhere in the back of their mind they always kinda wanted to connect them, but just… didn’t… until Buckleming finally bit the bullet and did it TERRIBLY, and long story short this does not explain why Billie could still go everywhere she wanted, unless she was Actually Death, or Tessa wanted to be talked out of it and let herself get caught or or or I need to stop.

This one is never getting untangled.

* * *

> TESSA  
> Good to know. So, you’re here. Why? You just love musical theater? 
> 
> DEAN  
> Only if it’s “Fiddler.” We need to talk.

Oh I remember the meta at the time for this :P I suppose it’s even funnier knowing Dean liked the Supernatural musical only like, 6 episodes from now.

* * *

Constantine, the next suicide bomber, is not dressed in a trenchcoat because that would be too… well, maybe copyright infringement grounds. He’s wearing plaid but in a sort of Misha way not a Winchester way.

* * *

I love Cas. I LOVE CAS.

There was like a solid month of glee over “prime numbers can be intimidating” like hell yeah they can, humanity still probably hasn’t even discovered them all and they only get more intimidating the further up you go. And Cas knows them ALL.

Also Cas’s beautiful pop culture obliviousness/savviness. His knowledge and (mis)application of 3 major franchises (LotR, Indy and Star Wars) are vitally important in the end of the season. After this, honestly the entire thing is dropped, like, Cas carries on blinking off references and not making any more himself, really, to this extent. Even when he watched a bunch of TV he hasn’t really started applying a TON of life lessons from it. His lack of context which made it such a delight in these 3 episodes where it was actually a thing, made it very easy for it all to slip away again in the writing. At this point it seems weirdly like once again this is something fandom remembers better than the writers, though considering Dabb played with it more than even Robbie or Carver with this little game of Metatron’s, you’d think maybe it would show up more now. :P

Ah well, it was clearly never that important to Cas, but it’s a weird thing that he literally has ALL that extra culture in his brain and he doesn’t see to even casually interact with it? At the very least it’s like having a giant Kindle library where if he’s bored he could space out and pay closer attention to some of the things.

Maybe that’s what the TV was in 11x18

Headcanon accepted for the sake of the fandom fridge horror that this is a season 9 only thing and literally three episodes ever directly refer to this :P

* * *

Cas doesn’t deadpan shit like “I’m very pop culture savvy now” so often any more either.

* * *

> [SAM’s phone rings]  
> Hey. 
> 
> DEAN  
> How is he? 
> 
> SAM  
> He’s, uh…He’s Cas. What about you? How’s it going?

Sam has his own amused/fond reactions to Cas being Cas, but not in Dean’s thousand mile stare about his dorky little friend. Anyway

11: Dean immediately asking about Cas when he calls. He doesn’t have pleasantries for Sam, sure, because their relationship is currently dead on Dean’s side, but that just means he’s concerned about Cas and while he seems to be calling because he’s amused it’s Tessa and wants to let Sam know about her, since he does kind of know her too (they met once, while they were all disembodied, that one time) the way he opens the conversation asking about Cas… yeah, that’s a thing that was heavily featured in gifsets of Dean being ridiculous about Cas. :P

* * *

Sam demands to know what’s going on because this is a seriously out of context phone call but it’s really worrying (and WHY don’t Sam and Cas turn back now? Well, Sam continues to not worry about Dean enough, and also because he’d stay for Cas and CAS has to do this and it’s important. It’s not a coincidence this call comes after Sam figures out how to open the door for him – and he’ll help Cas not get murdered by the trap, as well – but that’s the decision point and because the door’s open the call to continue on is so much clearer than if Dean had phoned before, and they were stuck and considering giving up.)

Anyway Sam and Cas have team work and I love it.

* * *

12:

> FLAGSTAFF  
> I know he’s the commander’s friend, and I know we’re supposed to pretend we like him, 

_The angels had that conversation_. Or Cas had that conversation with them. One way or the other a big gaggle of Cas’s angels sat in a room together and had a conference about Cas’s weird attachment to his human friends, probably after Cas let them hang out there in 9x21.

* * *

> HANNAH  
> Oh, God. 
> 
> TESSA  
> There’s no God. There’s only Castiel. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, and you’re done.

(Can we carry on assuming angels DON’T even think “oh my god” is a weird thing to say any more than Christians who might say it while also believing God is the Creator because that “oh my dad” last episode is still hurting my soul :P)

But – 13: Dean’s reaction to Cas’s fanatics continues, this time with a character we’ve been reminded kissed HIM in 4x15 in the recap of this episode, but now is one of Cas’s creepy cult apparently – I think she means this in a more defeated way, all existential crisis, unless Metatron REALLY brainwashed them, in which case I feel even more sorry for her, because brainwashing on this show can often have characters seeming to be entirely themselves, except for how they’re motivated to do one particular thing… 

Anyway, it love triangles it between him and Cas and Tessa with Cas stealing her affection, given the very specific way Dean reacts to Cas’s angels and the cultishness that Metatron’s working off of fro the other angle, so like, perfect storm of how Dean feels about it and what Metatron is agitating…

* * *

> HANNAH  
> You wounded her. 
> 
> DEAN  
> More like “defused,” okay? I cut up that old testament graffiti she carved into herself. I figured that would break the spell.

Alter the symbol, alter the spell.

Considering the phrasing, you have to wonder if Dean ever tried this for his own problem.

(Grossly, there was so much idle speculation about if you could chop off Dean’s arm and the Mark would grow it all back for him – I think him just trying to cut a line through the Mark or something no worse than all the random times they cut themselves with silver knives to prove they aren’t monsters…)

* * *

> HANNAH  
> It’s horrible, but there’s only one person who can punish her. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Let me guess. Yea big, trench coat, sensible shoes?

14 – Dean having another go at describing Cas :P

Also more discomfort at the angels’ veneration of Cas. I didn’t stick this one in the Dean is jealous of Hannah gifset because the sensible shoes thing is overwhelming with the Destiel in another direction of Dean just thinking Cas is a smol dork, but he is bouncing off Hannah once again emphasising Cas is their leader and Dean is just so uncomfortable with it he snarks back at her about wow wonder who that could be NOT THE ANGEL YOU’RE ALL SO OBSESSED WITH MAYBE?

* * *

(Dean, honey, you are so obsessed with Cas)

* * *

> HANNAH  
> You have to understand that Castiel is the only thing holding us together. A month ago, half the angels in this place were trying to kill the other half. Castiel has given us a purpose. But more than that, he has given us a way to live in peace. We have rules. Order. If I let you take matters into your own hands, what’s to stop one of them from doing the same? 

I LOVE CAS AND HOW HE MADE ALL THESE ANGELS WORK TOGETHER

I think these rules did sort of go back to Heaven without him but Heaven is still really such a mess.

Anyway it reminds me of the Leviathan – without their leader they were useless, and they couldn’t even pick a new one or something – without God the angels are useless and even the angels who try to keep order and become God or rule Heaven have been panicking and upset so overreacting at best (the archangels (both apocalypse attempts), Naomi) or total disaster zones (Godstiel, Metatron) – the fact we DON’T know who’s ruling heaven right now is GOOD because all the alpha personalities are gone, and they may attempt democracy, and here no news is good news. Anyway I like to think Cas helped Heaven get a little more settled even if it was indirectly and he’s still exiled >.>

* * *

I love how more and more angels show up through this conversation until Dean’s facing off at least 10 angels armed with one angel blade and the hidden first blade – I think itching for the fight, but it gets to the point where he knows he possibly couldn’t take them all, and the fact it takes like 10 angels for him to decide to back down and surrender his angel blade is pretty terrifying.

* * *

> SAM  
> You sure you don’t want to go back, Cas? Look, if Dean is right about Tessa… 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> No, I, uh…I do. I just… give me a second.

Aw Cas. You have to do this :< You don’t even know yet that this is SUCH a personal quest for you, but it certainly feels important.

I don’t think he really accesses all the pop culture but the sense of a quest is in these trials – the door, the penitent man thing – so I feel like fiction is  _subtextually_  pushing him onwards.

Sam is now concerned, but not enough to abandon Cas. He makes it about Cas and what he wants so that it’s all Cas’s decision to turn back.

* * *

Cas does have good reflexes

* * *

I love how Sam’s response is just how terrible the reference is. Like why would you do this. It’s so cheap. We’re in a dusty warehouse corridor. Why. Where is your special effects budget, Metatron.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Okay. Well, let’s start with an easy one. Who are you working for? 
> 
> TESSA  
> Castiel. 
> 
> HANNAH  
> Liar. 
> 
> TESSA  
> People like you, they never understand. Sacrifices have to be made.

People sitting in that chair really like to make judgement about other people in the room :P

But yeah I guess this echoes Dean and Flagstaff just to have Hannah react – she’s not so different after all, in that way where she can be just as emotional in response… In this case, in Cas’s defence, twice, refusing to believe that Cas would send the bombers. Dean has been set up to look like he thinks Cas might, which isn’t corrected until the end of the episode. Dean and Hannah now are balanced against each other again in how much they care about/trust Cas and of course Hannah want to be loyal and trust Cas. In a way it’s unquestioning for now until she confronts Cas over what Metatron says at the end when her trust is betrayed, maybe not because of the bombers but because Metatron gives enough reason to doubt because of the grace thing, which IS true. In front of the whole army, they have to have order and trust and all that she spoke about that holds them together. If they shook it off it would leave however much of the army NOT trusting Cas and cause more factions for him… If this hadn’t worked instantly it still would have destroyed the army long-term…

Anyway, using Hannah’s interest in Cas to balance against Dean’s, blah blah skip to the end of the episode, Dean wins both Cas’s not-killing-him thing for the giving up the army thing which is Dean’s reason for saying he trusts Cas. But like Hannah he really don’t want to hear that Cas is behind it – that “Oh and you’re done” earlier. It makes him uncomfortable and he hates it, just the same as Hannah is lashing out. So, like, I guess just a comment they’re still in the same orbit (Cas) all episode. Though reacting differently openly.

* * *

> DEAN  
> So you go after one of the bad guys, and if a few humans get microwaved, no big deal, right?
> 
> TESSA  
> In the grand scheme, they don’t matter. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Oh, Tessa, you are so wrong.

Anyway for no reason WHATSOEVER Dean has a big reminder that he is Dean “Humanity” Winchester and this is where his heart can ALWAYS be melted and he can ALWAYS stand up for humanity and and and and that happens this episode

I mean ignoring everything else he and Cas are clearly soulmates in the non-SPN application of the term

I mean the way he completely changes character to say that an MELTS like aaaaaah Dean loves humanity Dean IS Humanity he always has been this is the sort of stuff he fought for back in season 4 and 5 and WON CAS OVER WITH

I wonder why it was necessary to shoehorn in a brilliant Dean “humanity” Winchester moment in this episode

* * *

I also can’t believe Dean manhandled Hannah, a full powered angel (as they come right now) out of the room. He could have taken at least the first 7-8 angels that swarmed him earlier >.> Easily.

* * *

> HANNAH  
> Is – do you think she’s telling the truth?
> 
> DEAN  
> She thinks she is.

This IS sort of also why Dean would rather he (or Sam) do the interrogating, because angels lack this sort of subtlety in many cases. Which I think is why this plan works so well for Metatron. He’s playing off their faith in Cas.

* * *

Oh no Cas is so happy when he thinks he found the door to Heaven. Oh he’s so optimistic and – aaargh

> CASTIEL  
> I can hear it. It’s calling to me, Sam.

This somehow all feels very typical of Cas and the angel plots – this is why I get so upset about Cas in 7x21 being SO happy when he says “Sam – he’s talking to angels” – he LOVES angels and Heaven, and just being in the presence of this spell mimicking Heaven, it’s an actual CALL to him. And for so long it’s a pull he can’t resist when it comes to angels.

(I like that in 12x10 it was a personal favour and personal investment in Benjamin that sent him off to deal with another round of angel nonsense, rather than this broad duty/obligation that gets him every time, and the overall question of his love for Heaven doesn’t come into it really, aside from Ishim and Mirabel reminding him of all the crappy stuff that happened and saying they “didn’t think he’d care” because it all puts Cas at such a distance from this feeling… I wish things were better with him and Heaven and he could choose his own path with their blessing, as it were, but at least he’s not being yanked around by them any more.)

* * *

Anyway, this is such a cruel thing he does to Cas – even the music as Cas walks in before we see anythig is that torture-related music, “cheek to cheek” that Alastair sings in 4x16 (the beginning of Cas’s journey, that episode) – but this is all set up to just completely dash Cas’s hope.

* * *

God, that fake heaven though. Dogs and dolphins and cherubs and I think a Pegasus hidden behind a cloud… The dog has wings and a halo so I think it’s also an early “dog that thinks it’s people” joke (which is interesting when Josiah tells Cas he doesn’t see an angel)

Even on DVD quality I can’t tell if that one cherub is holding pie for real or not. But regardless, this mockery of Cas’s place in Heaven, the presence of his “heaven” on Earth, and the general connection to Dean through the song will always mean the entire set up has at least half a point for all the Destiel nonsense :P I won’t count it for now because I think it’s less overt but OH the meta I read about this room when this first aired… I really really wish I had reblogged more at the time >.>

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> So, all of this – it was a a lie.

Oh Cas

* * *

This, like the Flagstaff scene, is one of those genuinely intense, dramatic moments that I just LOVE when this show really gets into it and takes it all seriously and builds the tension properly. When Josiah grabs Cas he’s pulling him in for that one urgent last conversation, and unlike Dean’s problems getting the truth from the angels and getting a confession from Tessa that matches his OWN despair, Josiah’s blinded eyes which apparently still can see Cas, or maybe COULD see Cas, make this huge potent moment when he describes Cas and explains to him why he went against him and his lack of faith in Cas…

Josiah dies with all his faith gone though, because

> JOSIAH  
> Supposed to be here…Gate… He told me… After Ezra, he told me that I should come to him. Metatron told me that I could go home. I just wanted to go home.

This is symbolic of all the angels this year feeling exiled and betrayed by their leaders. For the regular angels the factions and squabbling has got them nowhere, and the one angel who would be able to let them into Heaven is pulling cruel tricks on them. And Cas, who seems like he’d have the best shot at taking Metatron, as Gadreel points out and it’s obvious from his HQ he’s got a great shot at it, is morally estranged from the angels, so they don’t trust him anyway.

> JOSIAH  
> No! I would rather die than owe my life to you, Castiel. You play at being noble. You play at being one of us. But I look into your eyes… And I don’t see an angel staring back at me.

I don’t think it’s JUST Metatron corrupting him to think this. I think the angels are really genuinely struggling to understand Cas and what he is. His hybrid nature is a Thing ever since 9x09 when he took another angel’s grace, or 8x23 when Metatron apparently bestowed a soul on him.

I think this is the big moment in Cas’s arc and I think season 9 is brilliant at the set up – I’m just sad the plot accordion got in the way because this genuinely feels like it all got buried until season 12 so this TENSION and visceral HORROR about what Cas is all gets kind of diluted out. Cas got some self-reflection here and there, but being questioned about what he wants, who he is, is a very season 9 thing, and his arc towards humanity and picking his real family is sooo slow and it’s put off and dragged out. THIS is the culmination of the natural build-up of the season to make us question SERIOUSLY what Cas is and what he wants, and how it’s all affected him, and after everything he’s been through so far, how he’s changed in ways that other angels just can’t understand. Ishim called him an angel’s angel and while he really hasn’t been since season 4, like I said somewhere around 8x23 or 9x01 in this rewatch, the Cas of 8x23 is 1000 miles from even the Cas of  9x09 or 9x10 once he has some grace back, in a way that the Cas of like, 8x23 and pretty much any version of Cas before that who’s fully himself aren’t SO different, despite what he’s learned along the way. He’s written differently, acts differently, and is visibly changed by the experience of being human, like he never quite recovered from it, and it’s more than just being weaker and having no wings, or knowing pop culture (thanks Metatron)…

Ugh, I just love this moment. It’s so shocking, and it HORRIFIES Cas about what the angels think about him, what he is. He is so determined to help them, and I think this one moment could easily horrify him enough to spur him to work with Hannah next season, because he has so much to prove. His last line of the season – he just wants to be an angel – betrays so much of his weariness and anxiety on this arc of his, and at least in this part of it, he’s still clinging to his old culture, and his old family, though they have begun to reject him, and the set-up has already begun that he truly belongs with another, human family.

I suppose the “I love you” in 12x12 is the final answer to this, especially since this scene is with an angel laying splayed out dying and using that confession to tell Cas what he is. Then skip ahead 2 seasons and there’s Cas splayed out dying and instead of in a room that’s a mockery of his shaky attachment to Heaven it’s on that plaid couch >.>

* * *

> DEAN  
> Just you and me now. Let’s talk about us. I mean, we got history, yeah?
> 
> TESSA  
> Sure. I still remember our meet-cute. You were dying. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Good times. 

Oh Dean >.>

But yeah, flirty flirty dialogue (about welcoming death >.>) and reminds us Dean missed Tessa – had a hole in him for a YEAR that was not going with her. She represents what Amara does in season 11, that call of oblivion and Dean wanting it to be over.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Here’s the deal. I like you, Tess, okay? For an angel.

*grinds teeth*

I suppose having Dean have a thing for an “angel” is again juxtaposing him and Cas – Tessa is death, Cas is life, just not one he thinks he can have.

* * *

> DEAN  
> No, forget Cas. Why are you doing this? What would make a person want to pop their top, huh? I mean, look, I’ve been in bad shape. I have. But I have never been that damn low.

Oh Dean :< You just do some huge self-destructive gesture to save someone else or in this case get your revenge and don’t even see it as suicide because you think it’s for a great cause outside of yourself, like you’re not even WORTH it as a person to consider in all that. I mean it’s worth remembering Dean’s feelings about not dying when he was supposed to ended up contributing to his mindset of season 2 that eventually led to him selling his soul with a ONE year contract. Now you’re being gobbled up by the Darkness and you don’t even care.

* * *

> TESSA  
> I guess I just can’t take the screaming. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Who’s screaming? 
> 
> TESSA  
> All of them. The lost souls. The ones that can’t get into heaven now that it’s been boarded up. I hear them. They are so confused. They’re in so much pain. All I want to do is help them. It’s what I do. It’s my job. But I can’t. So I suffered… Until death, nothingness. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so bad. It seemed quiet.

*sad music* *epic well-delivered well-written speech* Dabb really goes for the epic sad speeches. I’ve been commenting on that as he writes more and more dramatic episodes once he’s writing on his own and he has SO MANY huge moments in this episode :P It’s not quite the style of some of Edlund’s episodes that felt like plays but it’s got really endearing quality that he puts his heart into writing all these moments.

I can’t believe this also just kind of vanished until the end of season 11 when Billie was like hey some use for all these souls and then God presumably put them all in Heaven where they belonged.

Anyway this is beautiful Tessa characterisation even if she’s apparently an angel now and all, because she’s always been about that natural order, and if you’ve stuck with this rewatch you’ll remember 4x15 was mostly just me rambling for paragraphs about what a brilliant character she is and the fact that she’s all retconned and messed up by the current plot and yet Dabb STILL manages to capture how TESSA should be within all this…

*grudging fist bump*

* * *

> TESSA  
> I thought about it. But I was too weak. Till Castiel gave me a reason to die.
> 
> DEAN  
> Yeah. See, that just doesn’t sound like the Cas I know.

14: See????? He doesn’t believe it long before he tells Cas he didn’t doubt it based off the fact he gave up his army. Pfft.

* * *

> TESSA  
> But doesn’t it, though? And the Cas you know, would he raise an army of angels without telling you? ‘Cause this Cas did.

And the fact the drama is about trying to undermine Dean’s faith in Cas all episode!! Like!!! It’s all about how much he cares about Cas and trusts him despite everything!!!!! AAAAH

And you have to ask why are we seeing all this NOW when Dean’s humanity is being steadily destroyed and we’ll soon see it’s aaall gone when we get to Sam and then Gadreel at the end, and I would say in 9x23 he’s just demon!Dean and doesn’t know it yet.

* * *

> DEAN  
> No. No, see…the fun’s just getting started.
> 
> [DEAN pulls the First Blade from his jacket. TESSA starts back] 
> 
> TESSA  
> Dean, what have you done? 
> 
> DEAN  
> What I had to.

Tessa knows what this is. Uhoh.

“Welcome to the club” – Did I see speculation that Dean was gonna be an angel of death because of this statement? It’s more about the “did what I had to do” statement, and that Tessa is showing Dean where it leads, to this horrible dark end where she kills herself to make the screaming stop. (I swear muuuuch later in season 10 Dean mentions off-hand he’s tormented by visions and screaming? Like, 10x18 or somewhere in that late part of the season)

Anyway it’s probably important Tessa kills herself on the blade, making it an unsatisfying kill because Dean didn’t bloodlust into it, and then he fails to kill Gadreel, because the Blade really wanted to kill angels – the closer to God the better I guess, as it’s Amara’s hatred fuelling it all. This is the part of the show where counting and analysing what Dean kills is almost like keeping track of power ups he collects in a video game, and in 10x10 Metatron confirms the blade has a sort of hunger and power level that it’s after.

Dean doesn’t watch Tessa die, but averts his eyes. Unlike Zach dying right up in his face which he DID drink in with satisfaction, this is one he can’t watch. One of the few times he really does NOT look, which given his huge bloodlust at the moment, yeah. Significant.

After she drops to the floor, THEN Dean turns his attention to the Blade, and it gives him that little moment of satisfaction.

* * *

Also, lovely close up on it with really bloodlike blood on it, because sometimes these weapons have like, chunky bright red paint on, but it looks translucent and dark and really real.

* * *

*Dean attempts to fight all the angels*

* * *

Off screen, sadly :P

* * *

> HANNAH  
> He put up a fight.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Get out.

Cas is really dismissive of Hannah there, like he’s really disappointed they did this to Dean, though they’ve clearly heard what Dean did. Cas is pissed about that too, obviously. And disappointed in Dean.

Still, once Sam and Cas are back, they un-tape Dean’s mouth and uncuff him, despite the face this interrogation room is now being used against Dean.

Anyway, Cas is so in charge now and if Dean wasn’t distracted he’d be really enjoying it :P

> DEAN  
> Yeah, you think I don’t know that? You think I wanted that to happen? 
> 
> SAM  
> I don’t know, Dean. Did you?

Uhoh :P Sam’s finally beginning to get a measure of how far gone Dean is, as I said, after Cas raised his own concerns. Their deal not to bring the First Blade is brought up again and Dean dismisses it as a stupid deal despite everything that just happened.

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> All right, that’s enough. Stop it. 
> 
> HANNAH [opens the door]  
> Commander, I’m sorry, but you have a call…From Metatron.

Dun dun duuuun

I find it funny how Cas tells them to shut up (another version of “stow your crap” from earlier – with Dean currently broken, Sam and Cas both have to do their part to peace keep in the messed up new dynamics – anyway as soon as Cas tells them to put THEIR issues aside, Hannah shows up making it all about CAS’S crap

* * *

Or, well, Metatron is. Hi!

Someone pointed out how Dean is holding his Mark arm like it’s been sprained all through this, like he’s still recovering from the kill. It probably is really bothering him >.>

> METATRON  
> Just to tell ass-tiel, there, that I’m still alive. His bomber failed. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> My bomber? 
> 
> METATRON
> 
> The crazy guy. Big knife. Kablooey.

Fake news >.>

> CASTIEL  
> Who are you to lecture me on lying? Your deception led to the fall. 
> 
> METATRON  
> I did what I had to do. I have always done what I have to do, for God and for the angels.

“I did what I had to do” is exposed in a completely different way, as a phrase to say what you WANT to do as if you have no choice >.> The denying yourself your own choice that this phrase conjures when it’s used in so many contexts about choices with consequences that COULD have been avoided… Like Dean not reading the small print on the Mark. The way it was explored with Tessa instead showed the consequences, not the moment of choice.

Anyway Metatron falls back on family as an excuse to do a ton of backstabby stuff:

> METATRON  
> What I did was neither good nor bad. It was necessary – a small hardship to make us all stronger, to make us a family again.

Same thing as Samuel wanting Mary back, doing it all for family, but sacrificing a bunch of family on the way to that >.>

“No more stupid angels” – he’s always been ready to sacrifice a bunch of them to get what he wants.

> HANNAH  
> Why would we follow you?

ILY Hannah :P I mean you do fall for it but you sound so sceptical and rightfully suspicious of him here. It’s only the reveal that CAS is compromised that makes her challenge him… Of course Metatron offering an amnesty means she like many angels chances it for the chance to return to heaven – as Josiah and even Cas showed, they’re all desperate to get back up there and be home again. I don’t judge her for doing that?

ANOTHER incredible speech because Dabb is just on a roll:

> METATRON  
> Well, look around. You’ve seen earth. You’ve had a taste of free will. I got to ask you – do you like it? I mean, the way you’ve flocked off to follow Castiel tells me you need to follow someone. It’s in your DNA. But Cas – he’s not what you think he is. He sends angels out to die. Have you told them about your stolen Grace, Castiel? How it’s fading away, and when it burns out, so will you? So…No, then. I’m not the best, but I’m the best you’ve got. You want to stay with Castiel, fine, but he’s playing you, because at the end of the day, the only thing he cares about is himself and the Hardy boys there. You’ve got a choice to make. Make the right one.

First Metatron references Tyrus, the angel who loved Earth, who he obliterated, aka that option is off the table and as your leader I think we can all agree Earth sucks. Then he snarks about free will, after all we’ve seen of Cas letting his angels have Friday nights off to go to the bar, and of course, calling back Cas’s plea to God in 6x20, about teaching poetry to fish when it came to angels and free will. They’ve come so far but the appeal of order and someone telling them what to do… “DNA” is an analogy, but season 8 showed us all that stuff about angels having operating systems that can be hacked but how they were built to serve. Their core being is one without free will…

One lie, immediately followed by the stolen grace and how he’s dying, which he can’t deny. He constantly keeps glancing at Dean while this is happening. When Metatron says the thing about sending out the angels, because of how he thinks Dean doesn’t believe or trust him, and then again checking Dean’s reaction when Metatron says how he is dying. Dean is off screen but Cas’s eyes just won’t stop going to him.

We don’t see Dean’s reaction to the end, thought we can catch Sam in the corner of the screen looking really concerned. Sam stays blurry in the corner, while

15: - the line about the Hardy Boys doesn’t really include Sam, the camera pans over Cas onto Dean

He looks really sad and concerned about this… I would NOT say those are his angry eyes :P

Anyway Metatron ends with saying the angels have a choice again, and tell them to make the right one, and they all turn in creepy unison to Cas to explain himself and give HIS side of the story, when Metatron has woven such a clever trap for Cas.

* * *

Hannah sounds so betrayed about the grace thing. In a couple of episodes she’ll be breaking into Heaven beat up Metatron for the location of Cas’s grace :P

> CASTIEL  
> It’s complicated. 
> 
> HANNAH  
> So he wasn’t lying. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> He was about everything else. He…you believe me, don’t you?
> 
> HANNAH  
> I want to believe you, but I…we need proof.

“it’s complicated” and his direct appeal to Hannah as a “you” who he hopes would believe him over everyone else in the room again makes a personal connection between them - and break up language

She goes to “We” instead of “I” and starts speaking for the angels. (I can see WHY they picked her as a leader at least for a while)

And she’s quick to go to “punish him” because she doesn’t like Dean when she’s supposed to, and HE not he and Sam in general is the ~human weakness~ for Cas that he needs to cut out. (I feel bad casually quoting Ishim :P)

* * *

> HANNAH  
> You gave us order, Castiel, and we gave you our trust. Don’t lose it over one man. 

17: Ahahahahahaha but he’s in love with Humanity – I can’t believe the “one man”/”one human” stuff – these last 2 episodes pair together so much and 9x23 plays off almost everything said about Cas and Dean in this episode… Obviously next episode Metatron making it about “one human” blurs this with the “humanity” thing even more.

* * *

Dean really thinks he deserves it and worries Cas would do it. Cas stares at Dean and KNOWS he can’t do it.

I can’t remember if it’s this season or season 6 & 7 I just went through with my mum where “can’t or won’t” is such a big deal, but “can’t” implies so much more in this case than “won’t” because it sort of suggests the forces involves are just too HUGE for Cas to overcome. “won’t” is still a strong choice he would make, but “I did what I had to do” – implies that there’s NO choice, and in this case it’s true. Cas didn’t have a choice here, though Hannah put the lade in his hand and ordered him to do it with everything riding on it.

18: To everyone’s total surprise Cas picks humanity and his human family over Heaven and his shot at fixing it properly.

* * *

> HANNAH  
> Goodbye, Castiel.

Such a break up.

* * *

*Dean and Cas exchange horrified looks about what they mean to each other*

*Cas watches his army go resigned to his choices and with his real family standing beside him*

*I cry a bit*

* * *

Metatron’s office! Ah, his gloating phonecall. I wonder where angels get his mobile number. Apparently that’s a Thing. Like demon bathroom walls.

* * *

> GADREEL  
> You should have told me what our elite unit was for. 
> 
> METATRON  
> Why? It was none of your business.

Poor muffin. He gets lied to and manipulated forever. Like, that’s his life story. >.>

* * *

> METATRON  
> So? Well, that’s an old writer’s trick – flipping the script. 

Mmm season 12. But Dabb flips the entire world around to see what happens :P

Little worried that’s from his terrible bad writing lesson from Metatron section but oh well. Nothing is funnier than Metatron giving Gadreel creative writing classes while Gadreel visualises stabbing him in his mind

* * *

> METATRON  
> You start by building up a seemingly unbeatable enemy, like the death star, or a rival angel with a bigger army.

The way Metatron pauses and gestures on “bigger…” never won’t make me laugh, because it clearly looks like in that pause he’s about to imply Cas has the much bigger dick, but then when you’ve used the subtext and his gesture to fill in that gap, he says “army”

I mean, this is LITERALLY THE SAME SPEECH NOW as that other meaningful pause. A sort of practice run on filling in a HUGELY suggestive gap.

[innuendo intended?]

* * *

Also the flipping of the script is the part where Cas’s weakness is revealed – the script gets flipped in season 12 and bam, “human weakness” from Ishim, “I love you” from Cas. Done and done. See what I mean about season 9 leading directly into 12? :P

* * *

> METATRON  
> And then, after a rousing speech, his true weakness is revealed. He’s in love…………………………………. with humanity. And now…I’m inevitable.

(18)

* * *

> GADREEL  
> What about Josiah? 
> 
> METATRON  
> Mm. He was a loose end.

Heh, Dabb going around clearing up all the plotholes in season 12.

* * *

> METATRON  
> Anyway, point is –while everyone else is playing checkers, I’m playing monopoly, and I always build a hotel on Boardwalk. And I always win.

So much board game meta… Mostly about chess, not checkers. Metatron doesn’t even know what game everyone is ACTUALLY playing.

Nice over confidence, you dick :P

* * *

Anyway Dabb vs cars, masterclass. Cas has a car. Why is he in the Impala? DRAMA REASONS. Because it is a powerful emotional beat.

Uh how did his car get to the Bunker in 9x23? Don’t ask. Just. Don’t. It’s worse than 10x22 after the reveal Cas had no car anymore because at least that was 5 episodes and a hiatus later so you could pretend it never happened for a while :P

….

I do like Cas sitting gloomily in the back of the car while Dean drives them all back to the Bunker. He’s chosen to be with this family, but shotgun STILL goes to Sam, even now. I think this may be more Sam’s insistence than Dean letting him, as well as force of habit. Remember 9x01 and how Sam set them up in his imaginary Impala, still letting Dean drive… Cas is another backseat character… For now. He’s given up his army but he has so many questions about his belonging with the Winchesters. We have a long ride until season 12…

* * *

19: Dean carries in Cas’s bag for him because he cares, because Cas is sick and even though he’s like 99% demon!Dean he’s gonna look after his angel, okay.

(Cas has a weirdly compelling side to demons… Maybe Dean just caught it :P)

* * *

> DEAN  
> About what? Yeah, I lied, but you were being an infant.

Dean used “baby” and “infant” on Cas in the end of season 6 about HIS choices

This is a totally unfair comparison and it wasn’t fair on Cas then either but it’s like 100x more unfair on poor Sam who is just trying to keep some semblance of control without realising -

> DEAN  
> Oh, I’m not apologizing. I’m telling you how it’s gonna be.
> 
> […]
> 
> DEAN  
> That Blade’s the only thing that can kill Metatron, and I am the only one who can use it…so from here on out, I’m calling the shots. Capisce? Look, until I jam that Blade through that douchebag’s heart, we are not a team. This is a dictatorship. Now, you don’t have to like it, but that’s how it’s gonna be.

*Dean eyeballs Sam angrily*

He doesn’t even use “brothers” he uses “team” – Sam disowning him in 9x12 has never been rescinded, and Dean has carried that hurt with him while deteriorating. Anyway, culmination of all I was talking about earlier about Dean turning on Sam, and how his worst tendencies come out there, because…

* * *

20:

> DEAN  
> So, batteries…
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I’m fine. 
> 
> DEAN  
> No, you’re not. How long you got?

Dean immediately switches back to a more reasonable sort of Dean who has GENUINE CONCERN FOR CAS. He still seems brash and a little flippant to begin but he has URGENT QUESTIONS

> DEAN  
> Cas, you just gave up an entire army for one guy. No, there’s no way that you blew those people away. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> You really believe we three will be enough? 
> 
> DEAN  
> We always have been.

And then he softens, when he has to talk about ACTUAL EMOTIONS when Cas brings up his concerns about Dean not trusting him, and Dean has to tap into a place of genuine emotion to answer it, and over the course of this very short conversation, he melts back to a relatable version of our Dean that we can make cutesy gifsets of them looking at each other over this table with…

And that “we always have been” is so soft AND at this point, with Sam out of the picture in Dean’s head, I do wonder if it’s sort of about Cas in that way where he falls behind stuff like “you’re OUR brother Cas” in ways to say and feel emotional squishy things about Cas without getting out from the safe zone where Sam is included too… But Sam’s not included here >.> Dean’s a shade off the guy who chases him with a hammer.

* * *

(Dabb’s thing about letting Dean and Cas even start to talk… This used to be like the one reason I fell back on to say I trusted him before I knew him better :P)

* * *

Anyway mirroring Cas’s scary entrance in 9x21, here’s some heavy footsteps here to ruin everything – if this was a NORMAL day of the week Gadreel would be their saving grace, and instead…

* * *

The fact he knew how to get into the Bunker the ENTIRE FUCKING TIME and never told Metatron or came to get them even while they were enemies. Love him :P

* * *

The filming of this entire sequence from the moment they get in uses weird camera angles that make the Bunker space look really different from normal – more confined and close, even hostile… Even the library looks strange filmed from the angles Dean and Cas are sitting at. And the close over the shoulder camera angles and low ones to catch Gadreel’s feet, and angles to catch Sam coming in and out of the corridors – if the directing had been a touch more brave, ALL the war room stuff would have been like, shaky hand cameras :P

* * *

Anyway I love how Dean just assumes his best Murder Face, like, you know in 7x20 when they were terrified Bobby would go vengeful if he set eyes on Dick? This is Dean setting eyes on Dick. Bye bye Dean.

* * *

> GADREEL  
> Because I can give him to you. I know where Metatron is. I know everything. I know the bombers. They were his agents, not yours. You don’t trust me, fine. I understand. I’ve…made mistakes. But haven’t you? Haven’t we all? At least give me a chance.

LITERALLY ANY OTHER DAY OF THE WEEK, MATE. That is like, a prize speech. Wins Sam and Cas over, and they’re the ones fucked over materially by him. Dean is carrying his big bundled up poisoned guilt, and can’t listen, because it’s all gone twisted inwards with HIS burden of it that he made. And so his descent which he started in 9x10 finally all comes out now when confronted with Gadreel and unable to forgive him because he hasn’t forgiven HIMSELF and taken on a curse which only makes that worse and –

* * *

Ouch.

* * *

He’s busy still making the mistakes – Sam and Cas meanwhile were bonding over their mistakes earlier because they’ve been through the descent and recovery, while Dean hasn’t even finished his descent yet.

* * *

Goes to shake left-handed in defiance of the fact handshakes were traditionally right-handed to STOP people going for a hidden weapon and stabbing someone. Where does he even keep getting the First Blade from? He’s definitely teleporting it back into his pocket.

* * *

Anyway hi demon!Dean

You are truly, truly scary.

* * *

Yeah I’ll always stick with this thought because after this, which I suppose is for 9x23, all the stuff about smelling sulphur around the Bunker – that was all about Dean and not Crowley. The whole thing about a demon in their home, which really is for the end of 9x23 or the demon!Dean stuff in 10x03… That sense of wrongness and that they can sense something is off… Dean gives into revenge and is completely lost in that moment, all his humanity gone. He tries to gather it back for a moment in 9x23 but it makes him sick, and he gives in, calls Crowley, and doesn’t even eat, hasn’t slept since who knows when… Crowley knows he’s already pretty much over the precipice and just needs that liiittle shove. Anyway he needs that symbolic death and transformation to officially become demon!Dean but if you just treat him as demon!Dean in 9x23 it’s much easier and I just LOVE the unravelling of Dean through this episode. It’s so so beautifully done.


	23. 9x23

This is one of those ones where you can see  _precisely_  at what point 12x15 aired in between working on this, so once more Lizzy works through wtf is going on with season 12 via an old episode with uncanny connections, because they ALL have uncanny connections…

This is like, the pinnacle of Carver era as an experimental project about being a really terrible writer… Before that inevitably catches up with the narrative by removing Metatron’s apparent control over it as an excuse, and a chance to try and explain why the writing is terrible, so might as well enjoy it before it’s beset by, like,  _everything_.

* * *

This season has too much in it. This is the longest recap. How many plot twists? Remember how Abaddon was the big problem?

The good part is it started with the flying monkey, and the entire recap for Cas being human was “he was naked that one time in the laundromat” like… that’s it :P Sure April is in it like 3 times for plot or being stabbed or throwing Sam through a door stuff, but any emphasis on what CAS was up to with her is being tortured, and the part reminding us how he was human is just him stripping down out of the old trenchcoat. I suppose when you have to compact the entire season, a big emotional arc like that needs one symbolic moment and that would be it. Crowley gets more obvious emotional recapping, and his moping in bed complaining no one knows what it’s like to be human is linked  _directly_  to Dean picking up the blade with his mind and Dean’s descent.

The best part is that it flows from 9x22 to 9x23 perfectly with catching us up to that last scene and then Dean stabbing Gadreel and the “NOW” card only gets in the way of the action for a second.

Also nicely ended with the music with just the guitar chord into a ringing silence (shush it’s not quiet but it’s that ringing murder noise the show has that Jeffrey mentioned in 7x15 and they’re using the guitar for it but it represents silence. It’s good, okay??) for the last few seconds of horrified stillness after Dean stabs him and then Cas and Sam lunge at him.

Dean throws Cas off so hard he flies into the bench at the back of the room – this is 1 of 4 times Cas restrains Dean from behind. The first time Dean’s in such a  murder rage he throws Cas off and Cas gets knocked into some furniture, then Cas subdues him again this scene the same way because he will never fight Dean and 9x22 only just made it extremely clear. Then of course, 10x03 where it works again, and 10x22 where again Cas gets thrown off and this time he’s not just accidentally knocked around but Dean turns on him. Kind of ominous here though for 10x22.

[At this point while writing the director’s name had not yet appeared on screen. Insert Dean looking unimpressed but not surprised into the camera.gif]

Sam, meanwhile, tries to use the whole “drop the blade” thing that worked in 9x21, while standing protectively in front of Gadreel, all drama forgotten in favour of being horrified of what Dean’s become – is this the first moment of Sam unifying with the previously thought of enemy for a greater good? In this case because he doesn’t think Gadreel deserves to be murdered on the spot, whatever he put him through, when he has use to them and seemed to be asking for forgiveness… Dean makes him pick a side, accidentally in a way. 

I mean, specifically, Sam working with his past torturers/violators in a way beyond putting up with Meg or gritting his teeth about Crowley or even being prepared to forgive Cas in 7x01, which a lot of people mentioned with Dean telling Sam to pick a side and throwing in a mention of Cas in 12x14, because on what scale was he talking? But in this case, just completely putting it all aside, and putting his body between Dean and Gadreel? And Sam will call Gadreel a real friend in almost the same breath as mentioning he still has nightmares about killing Kevin later in the episode. Possibly Sam’s biggest moment of compartmentalising and forgiving so far (as I said somewhere or other about 12x14, Carver era really crushes Sam in some really specific ways with the kind of trauma he accumulates). 

Except, of course, for working WITH Dean who could hurt him so easily all this long time he’s got the brother killing curse. 9x22 opening with Sam sleeping clothed and armed in his own home and “I nearly shot you!” emphasising how unsafe he really feels around Dean, and tbh that he’s half-prepared to do it if Dean turns on him, though I don’t know how consciously he’s thought that. Hasn’t come to it yet – I think this is all to make US uneasy about it around this point anyway. Sam is compartmentalising the danger and the betrayal over Gadreel but since it’s Dean, the rules for Sam working with him are a bit different than Gadreel as the brother thing is such a motivator to forgive or extend at least partial olive branches…

Anyway, Sam is standing between Dean and Gadreel, who is lying on the floor being used as a reminder of Dean’s rage and inability to put down the blade in a mirrored moment, poses and all, to 7x20 and Bobby’s encounter with Dick, when Charlie has been thrown aside and had her arm broken (ALL the parallels between Cas and Charlie which I guess start here before we know it and carry on until 10x21/10x22 and them dying/nearly being killed for this >.> least favourite set of parallels). This sort of completes the comparison of Dean as a vengeful ghost for this season, anyhow.

Finally, Sam can’t get through to Dean; Cas grapples him again, but Sam has to pry every one of Dean’s fingers off the Blade, and we get our first moment where we don’t see Cas bodily carrying a squirming and furious Dean through the Bunker to the dungeon in his arms and this happens twice in 4 episodes and I’m still kinda mad despite how objectively ridiculous it would have looked :D

Anyway it proves the rest of TFW CAN’T get through to Dean, not when he’s this angry. Cas can hold him back, but Sam can’t talk the blade out of his hand, and it cuts from this struggle without showing the resolution to the actual grappling and yelling, to Dean in the dungeon.

* * *

And that’s how you do an opening minute of an episode :P

* * *

Full-on symbolism with Dean walking up to the edge of the devil trap and then stepping away from it, like… Not gonna risk it. He hangs in the dungeon for a while and we never see him cross the line, just edging around it.

* * *

> DEAN  
> And you two are gonna do what? Take on Metatron yourselves? That’s smart. Oh, no, wait. No, you – [motions to CASTIEL] you lost your Angel army. And you – [motions to SAM] now you’re trying to lock up the one guy who has a shot at killing the son of a bitch!
> 
> Hell of a plan, fellas!

OH That’s why he says “fellas” in 10x03 right after they revive him. Bookends to them shutting him out, since once they lock him in the dungeon Cas and Sam are finally handling Dean as they have to, instead of tiptoeing around the fact he’s turning into a demon right before their eyes. We officially enter Sam n Cas panic about what to do about Dean territory that lasts until the end of 10x03, and these bookend it nicely. (After much denial, panic resumes after 10x14)

It took maybe 5 minutes actual time in their lives for Dean to go from dewy eyed “you gave up your army for one guy” to yelling at Cas for doing that and weakening himself. Again, using the blade massively hurts Dean’s soul, and I kind of like how being sweet to Cas was the ~last~ thing to go. Dean is demon!Dean now as far as the symbolism is concerned, reeking of sulphur and refusing to go in demon traps. 

His turn around on Cas’s actions reminds me of Leviathan!Dean in 7x06 – he’s pissed off because they’re clever and strong and powerful in their own way and missing out on a perfectly good opportunity to subjugate the weak. Cas had an  _army_  and Dean no longer sees the sacrifice Cas made, that 5 minutes ago broke through his shell for what will be his last real smile for months – now it’s that Cas is an idiot who should have prioritised having an army to take on the real evil (and just killed Dean while he was at it, he doesn’t even imply it clearly here, but obviously he means, you should have killed me if you knew what was right… Same sentiment from the end of the episode with “it’s better this way” and the last time we see Dean for 3 episodes…)

Dean thinks he’s stronger than the both of them (though Sam n Cas managed to subdue and disarm him like, a minute ago. Shush Dean), and that their compassionate choices have ruined everything. I think he is genuinely concerned about killing Metatron because he’s next on the list of douchebags Dean wants to kill, and he’s motivated by a very very twisted saving people hunting things of throwing himself at greater evils to take them out to save the world.

And he emphasises that Sam is going to be lacking a Dean on this attempt, which in the show’s rules about having your brother by your side is one of the grave crimes.

Of course in a little bit Dean punches Sam out and goes to take on Metatron alone but shh. He’s not feeling himself at the mo :P And will judge Sam for not doing exactly what he then goes and does, highlighting the depressing part of their relationship where this happens all the time, or of course Dean judging Sam for saying he’d not do what Dean did so hard Sam feels obliged to do it – “I lied” coming up at the end too.

* * *

Sam and Cas exchange more worried looks –

> CASTIEL  
> Dean…wasn’t wrong. My followers have abandoned us. 
> 
> SAM  
> Yeah, and Gadreel says he can help us. From where I sit, that’s more than an even trade.

Oh Cas I was saying this LAST EPISODE about you feeling certain Dean was judging you about the bombers – maybe you didn’t send them but his judgement was enough to make you doubt :< And he holds Dean’s word in such high esteem that even when he’s like this, it hurts, and now Cas doubts.

Sam on the other hand, also being a pragmatist, in a totally different way, recognises the worth of a defected Gadreel as better than a whole army that Cas suddenly misses right after “are you sure we three will be enough” “always have been” has been kicked out from under him 7 minutes later…

* * *

Metatron continues typing away on his magic typewriter. It’s now obvious to HIM everything is going somewhat-to-perfectly to plan – bearing in mind he’s ONLY controlling the angel arc so Cas’s personal crap with Dean is sort of a wild card. He DOES intend to lure Dean out to fight, but even he doesn’t know about the Mark yet, though that just makes him laugh harder at what Dean’s done because if there is  _one_  character on the chessboard who knows about the Mark, it’s Metatron. Even Cain doesn’t really appreciate what it is in the grander scheme, and Crowley’s holding out for a miracle. Metatron finding this out doesn’t change his plan, it just means he has an idea of how things will be even WORSE for Cas should he not fall for the plan and survive, demon!Dean will be running loose out there. Like, no win situation there >.>

* * *

“Do You Believe In Miracles” comes up on screen over Metatron, and it all seems to be about him and the angel arc, that this is the Big Thing that needs wrapping up, the ultimate threat that he needs to be dealt with… But of course those lines are actually for Crowley. As in season 7 – when will you get it, Crowley’s  _always_  the problem, Meg tells them, and here it’s blatantly set up to misdirect us, because these titles about heaven and miracles all seem to tie into the angel plot and are laid over Metatron. No one would think Crowley was after a miracle of his own.

Of course you can apply the title to every part of this episode, from them needing a miracle to pull off their plan to storm the Death Star, to Metatron’s hope to plant himself as the new God, including starting a new Biblical age of miracles on earth, walking among humanity and curing them etc. (In a total perversion of how Cas had his army working at the hospital.) Of course he sours miracles completely, whipping up murderous followers with them. Just the same as Crowley has a terrible miracle he’s hoping for.

(This is also one of those Crowlatron episodes like 8x21 and as my sometimes favourite ship I have to appreciate the scraps I get :P)

* * *

> NEIL  
> So, uh, Metatron. Metatron.
> 
> God?
> 
> METATRON  
> Just a second.

(I can’t believe there was an angel called Neil – is this like Flagstaff? Were they starting to run out of angel names?)

Anyway, little detail of Metatron refusing to answer to anything but God… Of course he has a massive god complex and blah blah fairly obvious in context, nothing interesting to say about that HERE, but I like it for 11x20 and fleshing out his actual issues with God, exploring the way he wanted to emulate him and so on, because he’s busy being unrepentantly awful but honestly, he sort of learned from the best? He feels like all his writer’s tricks are stuff he learned from God. He needs a good editor and didn’t get one (I think Cas could have been if Metatron had his shit together and wasn’t awful but a decent angel who asked for help so this is a total AU going back to season 8 :P) and ran amok with the Worst Story Ever, which he thinks is marvellous but of course he’s just using it to make himself look awesome and to establish himself as God.

I suppose the line from 9x18 from Metatron via Gabriel about “you’ve been God more often than dad has” or whatever it was to Cas, is part of why Cas is the rival. He’s been in the same place as Metatron and I guess Metatron can’t trust him, or that the other angels wouldn’t think Cas is a viable alternative leader (especially when he’s seemingly fine until Metatron reveals the stolen grace thing… Cas, would you STOP eating things for power?)

(Yes, I know… I guess it’s like a watered down version of the eating Purgatory thing – Cas is in a similar position but reacts much less drastically, in a sort of “did what I had to do” way where everything is reacting and trying to counter things, and his methods are careful and proportionate. Gadreel said he hadn’t done ANYTHING on the offence to Metatron, but he was organising the angels and still very dangerous to him… Anyway, Cas took enough power to manage that, but not so that he’d get overwhelmed with it like the purgatory souls. Just die as himself, instead of exploding or releasing thousands of leviathan…)

* * *

> NEIL  
> Is that the new Angel handbook you’re working on, or, uh…?
> 
> METATRON  
> No, no, this is a story, Neil, a marvelous story, full of love and heartbreak and…love.
> 
> NEIL  
> Sort of like “The Notebook.”
> 
> METATRON  
> Uh…
> 
> NEIL  
> I love “The Notebook”.
> 
> METATRON  
> No.

The fact the angels are hoping Metatron will actually come up with something helpful for them – a book to live by >.> All they want is guidance and Metatron was the Scribe of God, SURELY he should be able to write them up a new way to live???

(*points at Cas living by example since ever*)

Anyway the whole book end-y thing for the season, of love and… love (As Dean said in 9x02 he doesn’t really do those things). Only last episode Metatron said Cas was in love with humanity. Now he suggests 2 kinds of love in his script which is designed to ruin Cas. It’s important to remember he doesn’t know Dean has the Mark and his writing is not fucking with ALL of season 9, ONLY the angel stuff and ONLY has a vendetta against Cas, of which Dean is only an incidental part. Honestly, 9x18 almost feels like the first time Metatron really came up against Cas this way after tricking him back in 8x23, because for a while he’s just an irritating bug Metatron can’t squash when he seems to get involved. I think 9x14 also suggests Metatron subtextually is making a play for Cas for an earlier draft of this same scheme, so ever since Cas got back in the game, Metatron’s had it out for him and everything he does just infuriates Metatron more. If you’ve been following the rewatch, vague ramblings about this all over the place but now it pays off to remember Metatron is writing about CAS.

It’s an authorial comment from Carver, yes, about the entire show, and that’s not half fascinating. He dismisses that it’s like The Notebook but there are still elements, as people have pointed out, the ridiculousness of Dean praying every night to Cas for a year same as whichever one of them wrote the letters (I watched The Notebook for work and I guess it didn’t stick).

But on the level of what Metatron is actually up to it’s suddenly fascinating that this story is all about Cas. And Metatron’s revenge. Cas loves humanity in every way, and Metatron’s about to go after one aspect of it (humanity in general) to catch and destroy one particular aspect of it, the face that Cas represents Humanity with, its noble champion who is already decaying his own humanity – it works on every layer that Metatron is out to get humanity and he kills the last of humanity out of Dean so he can be resurrected a demon, confirming exactly that: Dean is humanity, and then of course Cas is in love with it. Or him. Whichever way you turn it it’s all Dean.

* * *

I mean the “heartbreak” is that he’s literally gonna stab Dean in the heart

* * *

Blah blah setting up Metatron’s fall with the angel radio thing and how eeeveryone can hear him when this button is pressed. Honestly the fact Cas figured that out is probably book ending his brilliant deduction about seatbelts in 9x01 when he’d previously never encountered them in the wild because although the Impala reportedly might have belts that go across the lap, like hell Sam and Dean use them :P Like, here is a strange piece of human(ish) technology but he works out what it’s for and uses it to save himself and the day :’D

I love Metatron’s boring Heaven offices everyone’s working at. I’m always kind of sad to see Hannah there because I feel she is an office worker angel… One of the most typical water cooler angels there are, who have always been running the bureaucracy in the background all this time and never really fighting on Earth or doing cool shit :P Like, a tiny glimpse of her just doing what she was meant to :<

Although under Metatron’s rule so better she doesn’t stay there I guess >.>

* * *

I like the transitions here, that Metatron monologueing obviously is going out to every angel, so we rejoin our current angels.

There is absolutely no explanation for why Sam and Cas are in Cas’s car.

I assume it drove itself to the Bunker.

* * *

> METATRON  
> I’d like to take a moment to welcome you all back. I want you to know how moved I am that you’ve accepted me as your new God. My heart, as they say, is full, which is why I want to share some wonderful news with you. I’m going on a short trip. Heaven’s door will be temporarily closed pending my return, but rest assured all will be explained. And it will be…Glorious.

Metatron setting out to make himself God with this weird ass plan to get Dean…

Got to wonder if he has to kill Dean because Dean as the centre of the universe and somehow the arbitrator on which way the universe has gone for years, as the firewall between light and dark, needs to be out the way or so dark he can’t object, so Metatron’s ulterior motive to draw him out could just be so he doesn’t have to fight Dean over this later. 

The universe tends to go where Dean says, and Metatron might be over confident and egotistical but he can see when Dean is the home team he’s playing against and better safe than sorry… the fact it’s the same thing as Cas and cutting out his human weakness to destroy him is almost, like, a happy 2 birds with one stone coincidence :P

* * *

I like how Gadreel and Cas just *headache* *dying over here but I will still make That Face about it* when Metatron talks.

* * *

Oh Gadreel :< Cas approaches him while he’s lying in the grass with an attractive smear of blood on his head, mirroring 9x01 and Cas and Hael. Cas has been on a huge journey since then, and I guess it’s hard to know where to start. Hael was going to go on angel radio and call all the angels down on Cas; they’ve just got an angel radio message to all the angels from Metatron who’s setting the trap FOR Cas to destroy him. 

Cas is now an angel again – ish. 

Gadreel leans away from Cas trying to heal him with a protest of “your grace” showing us how far Cas has gone and how broken he is really. Hael’s broken glass halo seems way more appropriate for him on the inside, or perhaps Gadreel who is now in deep repenting mode, and as a Cas parallel, representing that side of Cas that self-destructs to redeem himself for the angels. I think this is the last time it happens, or rather, the angel fall was and Cas has learned not to do this, because he goes along with Hannah’s mission but his heart isn’t in it and he’s happy to move on to repenting for other stuff, looking at the more human stuff in his life, helping Claire and Dean pretty much exclusively after 10x09. Don’t think we’ve really had any big Cas guilt moments since then in the same way – not with him self-destructing for HEAVEN. He makes a lot of choices this year :P

Anyway at least Cas heals Gadreel instead of having to kill Hael. He has a bit more luxury to help the angels, thankless task though it is. Of course Gadreel represents how Cas went from a villain to the angels to the one who’ll save them, even if this is a really mixed victory for personal reasons, he DID manage to get them all home to a stable-ish Heaven. Stable enough anyway that it’s not been a problem for 3 years.

* * *

There’s probably tons more about that one little moment because Gadreel and Cas are so layered but I’m very tired so I hope anyone reading this just muses on the mirrored moments a little while and appreciates the symmetry :P

* * *

Meanwhile: Carver’s weird fixation with Crowley. Did he even write him until season 8? I don’t think he did. He was in very very few episodes in season 5 and I think only returned in 5x20 – and Carver’s last episode was 5x18. I think 8x01 actually the first time he writes him… After 11x01 I think it’s best just to side-eye Carver and Crowley and that weird phallic lantern/fountain and move on - quickly.

I sometimes think Carver sort of manages to embody all his major writers in one way or another but in this case we’re getting Buckleming vibes :P

* * *

Mood whiplash from Crowley’s odd spa to

> DEAN  
> What the hell’s happening to me, you son of a bitch?
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Liquor before beer, bad taco? How should I know?
> 
> DEAN  
> I can’t turn it off! Ever since I killed Abaddon, it’s – it’s like this whole…other thing. I get this high and I-I-I need to kill. I mean, I really, really need to kill. And if I don’t –

Dean KNOWS Crowley knows and did this to him. He’s terrified and angry and reaching out for answers in that sort of desperate way where you only SUMMON Crowley when things are really really bad.

“I can’t turn it off” suggests that Dean has been managing to switch the bloodlust on and off as needed – saying he couldn’t do it “since Abaddon” means that 9x22 and all his stupid decisions are more than explained. This also gives us an insight into this “whole other thing” – a year before we find out about the Darkness, a little suggestion that this isn’t strictly Dean’s darkness overwhelming him. Perhaps an innocent turn of phrase ONCE, but knowing what we know with hindsight, he’s being devoured by Amara’s rage to kill and destroy her brother’s creation. Killing Abaddon was a powerful enough moment to let her in… It could even have been tapping into the powers and all the stuff where the Mark was glowing and he used telekinesis because that seemed to power him up enough to overcome Abaddon – the killing was just the reward for indulging that power and tapping into Amara’s rage.

Now we know the “really really need to kill” is all her influence, and that and demon!Dean’s behaviour are two slightly adjacent things. Crowley actually keeps the Mark well fed while he has him, so at least in 10x01 Dean is pretty much a case study on DEAN as a demon, while perhaps by 10x03 when he’s had a rougher time and been denied regular killing and also has Sam in front of him to rile him up with AMARA’S anger at brothers and stuff, then, yeah. Whole different beastie.

* * *

I like how Dean gets locked in the dungeon and literally the next time we see him after the episode starts he’s got the doors open and raided the supply room for summoning stuff. Top security, Sam n Cas. Is it a tiny lesson in not taking the proper precautions when it comes to Dean’s resourcefulness – literally leaving him with a room full of resources in his grasp? Obviously this episode leaves us on the warning that Sam and Cas are going to have to deal with demon!Dean and everything so far has been showing us how  _emotionally_ unprepared they are for it.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> It wants you to kill. The more you kill, the better you feel. The less you kill, the less better you feel. 
> 
> DEAN  
> How much less better? 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> One would imagine
> 
> the least-best better.

I love when language gets all tied up in knots like this.

* * *

Dean looks like he’s about to cry as he has to vocalise for the first time the thought of kill all the time or just die

He mentions Cain and Crowley LIES to him: “Cain was a demon” – swapping the order of events, and of course in a way where we know that from his speech at the end of the episode he knows full well what happened to Cain. He even references this  _exact_  exchange. I would call this a lie. >.>

Anyway I guess 12x15 has left me extra attuned to Dean being lied to, and I am feeling like combining sensitive season 12 Dean girl feelings with season 9 and 10 is probably not going to end well :P

* * *

Crowley is testing Dean all episode and when Dean brings up getting rid of the Mark but then admits he wants to kill Metatron more, he passes yet another of Crowley’s tests – that the bloodlust will beat out self-preservation instinct.

(At this point and until 10x14 removing the Mark from Dean is a perfectly sensible thing to do >.>)

* * *

> DEAN  
> But I have to get through that door, and I have to get to the blade. And you’re gonna help me.
> 
> [Camera switches to SAM, CASTIEL and GADREEL entering the bunker. The box that the Blade was in lays open on the table.]

I love how Dean commands Crowley, and then we switch to Sam LEADING two angels into the Bunker. Winchesters taking charge – their default thing where they end up in control of a room. Sometimes they hang back when they think someone is better equipped or more commanding than them but I think that pretty much  _always_  ends up with them running stuff anyway :P 

That was enough of a time skip for Crowley to whisk Dean away, and:

> GADREEL  
> What’s that smell? 
> 
> SAM  
> Sulfur.

To go with Crowley asking it the moment he showed up in the dungeon. There’s the answer to the question… Dean’s turned into a demon enough that like all the others, he reeks of sulphur.

(I’m guessing this is a thing that can be managed either with demon strength deodorant or frequent washing or something because Dean and Crowley could not possibly have pulled triplets while reeking of rotten eggs :P I guess it’s something that manifests when they use their powers and people find it at scenes where demons did crap because it’s a residue from their powers and of course Dean in transformation to a demon is being twisted up by demonic power or something very much like it…)

* * *

> SAM  
> Who else would he summon? I mean, he and Crowley have been bromancing over the Blade ever since Dean got the mark.

Oh Cas’s FACE. He’s come up against the love triangle briefly in 9x10 where Crowley was just making some little feelers out into where next for him and his plans, Cas just kind of eyerolling at how they have to work with him and so on. 

This is where he first knows that things are wrong. Dean working with Crowley and that he didn’t know, and generally how far out of control things got while he was busy, and how MUCH he blames Crowley, like  _of course_  things are so terrible because this has been the next part of his plan. Cas knows what the Mark does, in a very abstract way, the same rumours Crowley knows, if we have to guess from how he asked Sam about Dean last episode and in 9x18 when he told Sam to keep an eye on him, probably fully meaning to hurry things along and fix Dean.

(Also with 12x15 in mind, Cas summoning an army and re-taking Heaven? At this point I think he would still feel like he SHOULD default towards working with Heaven. He resisted it before, for personal reasons, since he got back from Purgatory, only to find out he HAD been working with them via mind control. The fall came too soon after to work out anything about a post-Naomi relationship with Heaven, and all the different factions etc have been the angels trying to work things out. Cas being recognised as a leader for half the season and at least a viable threat by Metatron for most of it, means that he DOES have a place in Heaven if he wants it, recognises that, and I think was hoping he could get everything together, get the angels back, and with order restored, use the resources of Heaven to fix Dean. (See also: not a bad idea to do that until 10x14) It’s not until the middle of season 10 and start of 11 he truly starts to feel UNWELCOME and OUTCAST when he starts making too many decisions in favour of the Winchesters over Heaven (like 10x17) and his criminal status is back. 12x15 he’s potentially reclaiming (or at least exploring doing so) something that he hadn’t QUITE lost here, although of course he gets a taste of it, being led to Metatron in handcuffs, it’s still largely their feud, you could argue, and the angels are going back and forth on leaders so much that of course at the end of this episode he’s free and standing around in Heaven chatting to Hannah. (I think 12x15 is only the second time he’s been to Heaven since 9x23… oh, 10x02, 10x17. Yeah. 3rd time. 3rd and a half if you include 11x22))

* * *

Blah blah Sam stands up for Dean with the angels being super practical about his chances of taking out Metatron, eventually signs up for the plan anyway because what other option to they have – Sam and pragmatism again; something that does align him with the way Cas thinks. 11x18 and sticking up for Cas’s choice, after seeing what he said in 11x14? Yeah, he understands.

He does also go for it only after Gadreel and Cas discuss the rest of the plan in which they can help, which honestly doesn’t seem to address Sam’s concerns about Dean being too dangerous himself and TO himself… But at least reduces the chance of Dean being killed and then they can deal with the urgent problem, of Metatron, and buy time to worry about Dean… Which would be great logic if he wasn’t already too far gone :P

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> Not if we can break the connection between Metatron and the tablet. That would make him just an ordinary Angel.

The whole “what broke the connection” thing with the tablet… Very curious words for Cas to use. 

Of course book ending the tablet being found and the tablet being smashed, in very similar staging of how it’s being dropped. (Take a wild frikkin guess at the director of this episode :P) I guess the fights may be similar with Dean getting thrown around by Metatron – I never analysed them side by side, although of course Metatron as the Worst Cas Mirror also gives us a kind of great non-Destiel reverse crypt scene as the climax of the episode. 

Externalising the trauma of the crypt scene for them I guess – Cas chooses NOT to prioritise the tablet, but to smash it (and it can’t control him to protect it, instead it seems happy to let him break it and end this)… Yeah, important moments for Cas, symbolically managing to give up Heaven’s control. See above: what I was rambling about there about how he’s been away from it for a while. He has to go through some more motions – the Hannah stuff next season – but his heart is no longer in it, and he makes a really hefty choice to break the tablet (I guess which he’s doing here, hence the “break the connection” long before he DOES it)… I remember the action at the end is all blurred together, Cas in Heaven and Dean getting beaten up, so Cas is almost like the Naomi to Metatron’s Cas, except he’s not controlling him and he’s trying to STOP him killing Dean.

* * *

… I wonder if anyone’s ever actually paralleled these moments together before. I don’t remember it from the end of season 9, although it’s very possible I read an excellent meta arguing it and have now FORGOTTEN. [insert the usual disclaimer I hope you take for granted about these rewatches that I have soup for brains]

I think also at this point we needed at LEAST 10x22 to realise how dedicated Thomas J. Wright is to his crypt scene parallels. At this point it’s like, blah blah here’s his next episode, where’s the crypt scene (*stares at 12x10 which I wrote about as ENDING this but have some feeling that it’s never over as long as he’s around*) but understandably at this point people might not have noticed TJW was so obsessed with this :P

* * *

> SAM  
> If Metatron’s number two shows up with heaven’s most wanted, [motioning at CASTIEL] the gig is up.

Oooh that Heaven’s most wanted thing was used again in 11x22 wasn’t it?

* * *

> LADY  
> Damn it, Al, I don’t care what you’ve got going on tonight. He’s your kid, too, and I’m telling you he’s on drugs.

They were selling the Mark descent as an addiction (and used Dean calling it a “high” just now) – Sam n Cas are the concerned parents in this case, Dean the errant kid, and in the here and now they’re mostly on the same page but I think in say 10x01 or 10x02 when Cas gets all distracted with other things “going on” there’s a sense of this, especially Sam in the line of fire.

On the other hand Cas is the one I think Crowley literally calls roadkill when he catches up to him in 10x03? Crowlatron parallels as he heals Cas! Which I guess would parallel that Cas has been far MORE worried about Dean than Sam has at this point?

* * *

Anyway Dean n Crowley on the road together, Dean letting Crowley ride shotgun. Probably a side effect of Cas having his own car and keeping them separate is that Cas never got to ride shotgun with Dean since 9x06 but Crowley’s been there several times since, like 9x11 immediately after all the nonsense about shotgun and its sacred place next to Dean. Since the driver’s seat is set, there’s only room for either an angel or a demon on your shoulder, not the healthy balance they’re supposed to represent :P

* * *

Dean walks under a red exit sign just like, one more for the road though he’s way past help now, and orders a coffee black as his eyes are about to be 

Crowley plays at guilt about that and Dean not being considerate of the service industry, which also means he gets to order his infamous uneaten cheeseburger. Considering I’m watching the start of season 8 as well, yeah, those cheeseburgers are all over the place and Dean’s scoffing them down, sometimes 2 at once, glad to be back on earth and among humanity. The sign he’s partaking in society :P Crowley frames ordering enough food to tip properly as a sign of the social contract in play; Dean NOT thinking of it that way and just ordering a coffee as a gesture of interaction is a sign he’s stepped outside of that.

[urgh and in 12x15, Cas and Kelvin seemingly ordering and leaving untouched two large glasses of water at the bar?]

* * *

Crowley gets all philosophical about howling at the moon to indirectly seduce Dean by waxing lyrical about what he could offer him if Dean would take him up on this. He eyes up the waitress on Dean’s behalf but Dean isn’t interested. He’s just interested in finding Metatron right now – Crowley is talking at a brick wall that just wants to kill stuff. But when Dean DOES become a demon, his sense of duty and responsibility disappears, and howling at the moon suddenly sounds like a great idea.

> CROWLEY  
> You never get tired of the rat race? Never get the urge to just…bugger off and howl at the moon? Never ask yourself, “is this it? Is this all there is?”

Dean and I guess we also (are meant to) initially think that Crowley is mostly talking about himself, especially as he has started to act mid-life crisis-y since this season, and getting his human emotions amped back up. 

Now we know he didn’t necessarily want Hell (thanks, 12x12), or at least hadn’t thought he’d ever get a shot at running it and had it dumped on him, we see that the  _boring_  side of running hell is emphasised more and more as time goes on. Season 10 really starts it – once Dean and Crowley run off together we get much more of an inside look at Crowley from then on, even after they go their separate ways. I guess we haven’t really seen his throne room and all that nonsense yet, and his sense of boredom or the outright disrespect or frustration from his minions is also something we don’t really see up to this point – though he’s had demons defect to Abaddon, the ones he keeps around himself have all been presented as loyal and eager as they’re mostly dropping by to move the plot along.

Anyway immediately after this he ducks behind fake protesting too much that he kicked human blood and isn’t being emo, to make Dean think that he IS just being emo because too much human blood, instead of mirroring how in the start of the season he was manipulating Kevin by being really canny about human emotion now and also having (always) been good at really DARK human nature, making it a dangerous combination to give Crowley extra tools for extra emotional manipulation (he manipulates Kevin into torture, which of course is ominous for how he’s taking Dean for his own purposes now).

Slightly wanky side note – I forgot about this lie CONFIRMING that Crowley and the human blood thing was a front for most of the time, so I think Buckleming really over-sold it in 9x16 or weren’t convincing enough or… something. Crowley’s a bit inconsistent and I think they are responsible for the most extreme change in characterisation considering he’s fine when we last see him in 9x11 and playing up the addiction but actually fine in 9x17, so really 9x16 should have started with Crowley trying to play Abaddon and actually treating her as a credible threat… But anyway every few days I find some way or another to write a Buckleming episode better, so I should probably stop…

* * *

> DEAN  
> Oh, so you’re full-metal douche again. Well, that’s fantastic. Would you like a stuffed bear?

This is one of the best-delivered lines on the show – he’s brimming with anger and distaste and “would you like a stuffed bear” is the most disgusted, sarcastic line I’ve heard ever. Dang Jensen.

There’s probably some interesting thoughts about Dean’s relation to demonhood here: it’s a mess about not wanting Crowley to be a vampire, because people get hurt, hating Crowley as an apparently fully functioning antagonist with no emotional baggage  _more_  and generally being pissed off with his existence… However Crowley’s talking about becoming less human, less emotional, and Dean hardly believes him but considering where HE is right now in relation to humanity… Not good. These words are frightening – that humanity can be so easily gained and lost.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Just trying to make conversation.
> 
> DEAN  
> How’s hell, Crowley? 
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Hell’s fine. Hell’s like a Swiss watch. Don’t worry about hell.

That’s significant, I say like not everything is, because it’s Dean doing that thing where he says/indicates one thing but then does another – like “do you want to talk about it?” “no” *immediately talk about it* - in this case, telling Crowley to shut up but then when he protests he was only trying to make conversation, actually immediately follows up with small talk of his own, sounding grumpily obliged to do it, but STILL DOING IT despite how he seemed to be grumpily blanking Crowley out. Another bad sign that he’s LISTENING and absorbing what Crowley says. Even if he seems to be angry and silent about it.

Crowley brushes off his request as if it were an accusation, but then pauses and admits that

> CROWLEY  
> Hell’s complicated. 
> 
> DEAN  
> “Game of Thrones” is complicated. Shower sex – that’s complicated. Hell ain’t complicated. Your problem ain’t hell. It’s you.

And Dean bites right back, pointing out Crowley was right about Hell being a swiss watch, so if there’s any complication it’s Crowley’s fault (Crowley also uses the phrasing which indicates a relationship – “it’s complicated” and Dean’s response including a mention of shower sex, so their aggressive flirting is going on underneath this)

Mentioning Game of Thrones also ties in a tiny part of 9x04, and that nice family bonding scene with Sam, Charlie and Dean. Bringing it up in this context just shows us how far away Dean is from that.

And his criticism of Crowley –

> CROWLEY  
> Fair enough.

Crowley wasn’t designed to run Hell, and Crowley has it as a surprise burden – this is foreshadowing development of REALLY seeing how fed up of Hell Crowley is, as I think 10x02 being the first scene to show Crowley with minions who are boring him to tears in a reflection of how it’s going to be for the next few seasons, to date, since the most recent season 12 episode featured minions boring Crowley to tears :P And that’s on the other side of finding out he never really went all out guns blazing to get the title but had it handed to him in a quirk of fate.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> What’s your problem, then?
> 
> DEAN  
> My problem is Metatron.

Again, Crowley bounces back to Dean – keeping up the conversation, and again showing them as equals with problems that can be compared this way, as if they’re just gossiping. 

Dean obviously has much bigger personal problems but they’re all being channelled into Metatron as an outlet for the feelings, giving his need to kill a big target… Something the Mark is thirsting after, and also the last thing Amara kills in season 11, AND in 10x10 Metatron admits how much the Mark would love to kill him, ranking himself as a bigger target than even regular angels because of his “Scribe of God” thing. Metatron playing God also is dangerously putting himself in the shoes of the exact thing the root cause of the Mark wants to kill most, more than demons, more than angels, more than even regular old Metatron. And certainly trumping Dean’s personal descent relating to Sam for now.

* * *

Season 11 hindsight does make this all very interesting. Who knows how much of this was ever Carver’s full plan but now we have all the info it is fun to put pieces together…

* * *

The old temptation of working with someone with much better resources – Dean complains about how there’s no info on Metatron, and  _immediately_  demons come through the door with the lead Dean needs…  You could almost say on cue.

* * *

Dean touches the blade warily when the demons come in and lets go when they leave. He hates demons and wants to kill them… but Crowley seems to be fine.

* * *

The phone they give him is yellow – dunno if they confiscated it off the actual kid involved or if that just happened to be one of the demon’s phones they loaded it up on instead of bothering finding it on youtube for Crowley – considering Dean has a laptop open in front of him and all :P

I suppose in a season with Dean’s pink ipod it’s amusing to look at him holding a yellow phone now. In this episode yellow is very very much about sulphur and hell, which the final confrontation will show with colour beautifully. Which makes the pink ipod a little sign of the layer underneath performing Dean – pink is a warning sign (used a LOT in the start of the season especially 9x06) but also the other level that Dean owns such a thing… Now he’s being handed a yellow phone, which will lead him off onto the next step of his unstoppable transformation… Yellow is not a happy colour here.

* * *

> CROWLEY  
> Apparently… Your angel has gone viral.

“your angel” – taking Cas’s spot with Metatron as Dean is consumed with revenge and he loses his emotional attachment to Cas.

Also, for what I was saying about the crypt scene repeat, Dean is the one again getting slammed around by an angel who needs the connection broken, and the only one in the original spot from 8x17.

* * *

Carver era Carver is… definitely a writer I have issues with and the fact we only get him at the start and end of each season would somewhat obscure it when it comes to… personal flair… Anyway filed under things I just do not know what to make of for his intent:

> BOY #1 [following a girls ass down the sidewalk]  
> And that, America, is perfection. 
> 
> BOY #2  
> Yo, dude, that’s your sister.

I mean, the show HAS incest subtext, pretty much always as “how you would care to interpret Sam and Dean” and occasional romantic mirrors to their dynamic, and it plays both sides with Sam n Dean and Dean n Cas subtext (and Dean n Crowley right now)… so is this some mirror for the sake of pandering? Random edgy incest stuff because why not, the show is known for it and apparently it’s a draw for some of the audience, so give them what you think they might enjoy? It’s a random little moment and I can’t see any way to connect it to Sam and Dean and their dynamic/where their story is at or ever has been because neither of them ever literally objectifies the other – not that I particularly want to look at their subtext but it’s normally in the stuff that happens between them personally. I mean if it’s saying the show approves of incest – ick – and feels like the end of the episode between Sam and Dean is sort of like a dying declaration sort of thing, then I suppose good for the people who ship it… It baffles me to have this moment here though.

I’d assume rolling back to what a casual viewer might think the point is to recoil with “ugh!” when we find out what the guy’s filming, and has his friend call him out for it. The calling out being the important part. 

Metatron’s interactions with humanity have a whole range of horrible human behaviours almost like he’s got a miasma around him; this guy, the woman who dies arguing with the father of her son who won’t help him when he’s on drugs, then Metatron seeks out the homeless camp and riles them all up to murder in his name. It’s possibly trying to show us the worst of humanity, that people can be awful. Dean “humanity” Winchester is corrupted and broken right now, and almost like with him out of commission, Metatron is happily making a mockery of “humanity” that Cas loves so much by whipping up violence in them… And ACTUALLY making a cult after Dean accused Cas of that in the previous episode.

Still this is a really terrible note in the middle of the episode and I’ve never liked it because it feels completely fake which means the writing is pushing something or other here, and it’s jarring and weird.

* * *

Oh yeah Crowley already knows what’s on the video when he hears Metatron’s voice and reacts smugly to Dean’s surprised reaction

*crowlatron intensifies*

* * *

> [DEAN gathers his stuff and gets up]
> 
> CROWLEY  
> Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re not gonna eat your food?
> 
> DEAN  
> Not hungry.

Dean’s reaction to Crowley is initially to pull out some cash and pay for the burger or leave the tip that Crowley was aggravating him about earlier. It doesn’t occur to him to think about eating or not eating, until an afterthought. Crowley essentially bothered him into getting the food and Dean possibly is reacting to it as some sort of power play from Crowley, assuming he’s bothering him because he WANTS him to eat or something – his own lack of desire for food and the fact that’s a glaring red light totally missing him. Whoops :P

* * *

Aaah no the Heaven playground. Aaaaaaah AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

* * *

*enjoy Gadreel’s most excellent stare into the distance with total WTF about “Wookie” while I’m trying not to be overwhelmed by Cas* 

The playground here is full of life in a sense – the angels guarding it are playing, and the sun is out. Compare to 12x15 and it was intentionally made to look empty, bare, and sort of abandoned and dirty on a grey rainy day. They might not have been able to help the weather exactly, but the shift between the first time we see it and the last stand out to me, especially as we were reminded of behind the scenes nonsense of Misha playing on the slide in both episodes :P

* * *

Anyway, Gadreel serves as the most angel-y angel ever (as Metatron points out for us last episode with his “ugh you’re such an angel”) and Cas is put in contrast, as an angel who’s been sort of ruined. Yeah Metatron did it to him, by putting all that pop culture in his brain, so again the whole thing is very manufactured to make the point but it DOES show the concept of Cas being altered by humanity and Gadreel as an angel in contrast who has no idea wtf that all is about. Possibly they just wanted Cas to have this moment he’s never had before of being the one making the reference, and it’s a good moment using all the resources of the season… Funny moment, not sure how much I like it going deeper because it’s kind of just there :P I feel like I’m reaching to analyse Cas being anything other than Cas in it… 

And I love him being resourceful an intelligent and using all HIS resources, so it is a good moment for showing him getting on with things I guess.

* * *

As I was saying earlier, this scene shows quite clearly Cas is wanted as the “leader of the rebellion” (against Metatron) so the stuff about him and Heaven as a concept or family is still not being developed in the way that it will after leading to 12x15 as, I guess, Cas still seems to have some faith and love for restoring his family and the call of “home” is still a powerful force on him (9x18, 9x22) and he still considers heaven to be home. He’s dealing with the politics, not being emotionally exiled, OR quite yet (like, within this episode) questioning his place among them. Oh, he’s been asked a few times this season, but it’s been much easier to ignore so far…

* * *

Dean continues to have Crowley in the front seat – this time a violation showing clearly it’s Sam’s place when they pull up at the end of the clue trail to find Sam there, who then points out he didn’t need a demon to do the work for him.

Dean thinks that Sam’s about to stage an intervention (I wonder if Sam was waiting, KNOWING Dean would come, or he heard the sound of the Impala and hurried the woman away and is covering her escape at the same time as confronting Dean). Sam just wants Dean to work with them on this –

> SAM  
> Yeah, I sort of got that. I just thought you might like to know that while you two have been playing, uh, odd couple, 

And points out that Dean’s actively been making it HARDER for them to solve this (although I don’t know how as they arrive at the same point at roughly the same time – Sam first – off the same clue :P) … He points out that Dean is eloping with Crowley, but I think just jabbing at Dean, because the elopement STILL takes him by surprise…

Sam compartmentalising, Dean holding a grudge and making it personal, the usual:

> SAM  
> A fight, I might add, you made that much more complicated when you decided to stab the one angel who could actually get us to Metatron. 
> 
> DEAN   
> You mean the angel that took you for a joy ride? The angel that slaughtered Kevin? That angel?

Dean thinking Sam should be more upset and want Gadreel dead on principle. 

Now this is interesting because Dean has a similar grudge against the BMoL for torturing Sam but of course he’s NOT Marked!Dean any more, and while he’s expressing his dislike of it in sadness and miserable faces, once Sam has this almost exact same conversation with him in 12x15 about how he’s working with someone Dean considers an enemy BECAUSE THEY HURT SAM, Dean has a more reasonable response which is to agree to work with them FOR Sam (and Mary), and openly what we were hoping Sam may have been doing but probably isn’t now with a bit more development, of going along for the ride, judging the operation, and choosing when to pull the plug on their cooperation. 

Dean offering to be a moral compass there obviously is something he CAN’T do here, but this situation is much simpler – Cas and Gadreel are intentionally now beyond his reach, being in Heaven and enacting their part of the plan with no idea what’s happening on Earth until Metatron comes back to tell Cas. Sam hasn’t exactly signed up to work with Gadreel full time – he makes sense as a resource to use in this situation and Sam can put it aside for long enough to deal with their very real terrible problems but again I still see this as early days to what’s being addressed in season 12… So. Moving on…

* * *

> SAM  
> Who you let in the front door in the first place. You tricked me, Dean. And now I’m the one who wakes up in the middle of the night seeing my hands killing Kevin, not you.

AAAAH

This does feel like something that Sam maybe should have mentioned sooner, such as in the 9x12-15 range of their fight when Dean still had approachable empathy even if it was a bit messed up.

Sam moves right on from dropping his emotional bombshell, and agrees they should carry on disowning each other, and NOW Dean is truly another thing he compartmentalises to work with, when he grudgingly admits that Gadreel was their best hope at info but Dean is the best shot at KILLING Metatron.

Dean says he’s ready to kamikaze himself on that, whatever the consequences, and Sam’s like whatever, while Crowley listens in looking all “aha” – he knows it’s safe to leave. Sam was talking about arming the warhead earlier but it’s Crowley who has actually done that and he now knows that Dean is on the right trajectory to get what HE wants out of him.

This conversation also starts with Sam mentioning the woman as “miracle lady” which is using the keyword from the title – “Do you Believe in Miracles” and this is all about the total non-miracle of Dean becoming a demon, and Crowley’s hope/faith that it will.

* * *

Also the way they film Jensen’s face in season - I have no idea how you can transform a face so completely but I guess all the little things like stubble, his current haircut, and the makeup to redden his eyes (and the way he’s narrowing them) turn his into this unrecognisable creature, when you throw in camera angles catching his face in a very certain way. I find it incredible how transformed he is – if you look at all the different shots of him here, compare to, like, the start of the season when he was happy and healthy… Yeah. I can’t even say it’s because they left his skin bare because he’s showing as many freckles here as 9x02 and he looked GREAT there… I also find it crazy how in 10x01 he looks 10 years younger, and once he’s not a demon any more, resumes a completely regular Dean sort of face. Like wtf Jensen.

* * *

> DEAN  
> Look, I don’t know what you expected here, okay. I don’t really care, but you wanted off the hamster wheel. Get off.

Something about bringing up hamsters in a Crowley context just makes me itch :P

Anyway. Dean’s “I don’t know what you expected” is very relationship coded. Or, well, “this was just a fling, bugger off” for NOW. More Crowley usurping Sam and Dean stuff –

> SAM  
> I know. But if this is it, we’re gonna do it together.

I think you could definitely read in Sam self-destructing along with Dean there, that same “I could go with you” Cas offers Dean in 11x23, although this is much grimmer in a way, that what they’re doing is so much more motivated by blood and revenge, and Dean’s not himself, and just – Sam so not dealing well with the Mark, and what it’s done to Dean and what he’s lost because of it. He’s still treating Dean like he’s Dean and that might mean something… 

While Dean punching Sam out in a bit is much more like “let me go Sammy” from Dean’s perspective, because that’s all gone for him and he doesn’t want or need it. (Well, I’d argue he’d never want Sam to come with him because he’d want to protect him, but in this case it’s more about pushing him away emotionally – maybe for his own protection in 9x21 if you don’t think Dean just didn’t want Sam to see him like that, but at this point I wouldn’t like to say Dean feels anything for Sam until he’s stabbed and gets a last little moment of perspective…)

Anyway again I think I’m coming at this from the wrong direction, squinting at what this comparison says, because I’m looking at it knowing Drowley is a done deal for next season and taking it as the main thing instead of the incidental but hilariously episode-reaction-overwhelming thing in 10x01… 

Crowley does make a point of trying to usurp literally every influence on Dean’s life, from parental to brother to romantic interest. He teases the same jealousy in Sam next episode (obviously also Carver), about he and Dean completing each other in a way that pisses Sam off… I may just be grumpy with Carver for the incest thing earlier, but obviously even ignoring that Drowey is at least  _initially_  in season 9 a love triangle (or whatever shape) involving prying Dean away from Sam too (“you’re lying to him like he’s your wife, which makes me your mistress” or whatever Crowley said along those lines), with the obvious take that I personally would always read that as usurping the brother dynamic in the way that the new relationship snatches Dean from his old role in the family (and literally, since their relationship is dead in the water with the Mark poisoning Dean right now).

Carver era is strewn with misunderstandings about feelings and different forms of affection being blurred together – although Dabb took over by then, 11x23 wraps that up thematically with Amara understanding what she’d been feeling for Dean was misapplied yearning for a better SIBLING relationship, and so on… Ugh :P  

* * *

Anyway… Metatron’s portal! I’m not laughing that I just stuck a gifset in my queue of Cas going in willingly accompanied by Kelvin and here he goes with Gadreel thinking he has everything under control and – oops they’re in prison.

* * *

Poor Gadreel. Back where he started, and ALL his mistakes were made AVOIDING getting back here and trying to do whatever he could or believing anything that would mean Heaven would forgive him and he’d never have to go back. All his work, and he’s locked up for not even the original crime any more, but his latest attempts to make thing right after changing sides for like the 3rd time…

Of course he always was going to end up back here after he killed for this – and killed innocents, and Sam reminded us moments ago that Kevin’s blood was on his hands, never mind all the angels Gadreel killed.

* * *

Anyway the angel Ingrid does all the gloating and locking them up – Hannah flounces behind her and looks pleased that this has all been sorted out, but doesn’t actually SAY anything, possibly to save on likeability for later.

* * *

Thinking about likeability, here’s Metatron hanging out as Marv, wearing the clothes he thinks make him look the most pathetic, and also the ones he’ll be stuck with for a good chunk of the rest of his appearances, where that gets turned around on him and makes him look genuinely pathetic because he IS. People compared it again to mimicking Cas’s clothes in 9x03 but of course he’s doing it out of cruelty, not necessity… More cosplaying Cas though.

> SCARF ANGEL  
> He’s a fraud!

Calling him out on his plan; what every writer fears hearing after convincing themselves they’re doing such a great job :P Of course Metatron is plagiarising and writing terribly and has advice like “steal from the best” so he knows that he lacks the originality. It takes until 11x20 to own up to it and be more at peace with himself and his terrible writing. Right here, it’s just a way to anger him.

* * *

Oooh the lady that he healed earlier has followed him – I guess she’s one of his disciples now… She’s changed into a plaid shirt, I guess symbolic of all the random humanity he’s been corrupting. Because plaid is humanity. Because Dean.

* * *

They really got Scarf Angel to stand at a great angle for the sun to hit his eyes and make them glow gold naturally. I have also been noticing while listening on proper good headphones that many of the angels have their dialogue tweaked to sound a little clearer and echoey compared to others, if they talk in that angel way, all full of conviction and righteousness. I don’t think Metatron or Cas have it, but Cas’s army and Tessa all did last episode.

* * *

> SCARF ANGEL  
> I am sorry you don’t believe me. But I must do what my mission demands. I must protect you.

It’s really really dangerous to try and follow the original mission >.> RIP Scarf Angel.

* * *

This is so brutal, and Metatron just loves how much they love him… Being willing to kill in his name (last episode Sam was telling Cas about how people did messed up stuff in God’s name >.>) – I guess in 12x07 Lucifer figures out the same thing about how you can enjoy the devotion of humans, but made them hurt THEMSELVES in his name. Or, Vince’s. Not that doing it for “Marv” is any better :P

* * *

Meanwhile Dean is having a weird moment with the Blade. Sam asks Dean if he’s good and Dean’s like yeah I’m good. Sam hands him the First Blade, which considering what Dean’s about to do is just symbolically awful about Sam knowing he has to enable Dean and put that weapon in his hands, because he sure needs some more guilt about that before the end of the episode :P

Dean tries to apologise for the previous months, kind of, and Sam’s like, I know. Because NOW he starts to get that Dean maaaybe hasn’t been himself. Dean’s intending this as last words, scraping up one last shred of himself to say goodbye, and Sam brushes it off, so that Dean doesn’t have to say it. Not sure Dean intended to say anything out loud but WANTED Sam to fill in the gaps for him, that he couldn’t really say.

* * *

Anyway night night Sammy. Dean is kind enough not to leave him with his hand in a puddle. He’s not that cruel :P

* * *

> HANNAH  
> You told us not a single angel more would die in this fight. 
> 
> CASTIEL  
> What do you think I have been trying to do?

OW. Whenever Cas gets that urgent gritted teeth anger I just die a bit about how frustrated he is to make his family see…

Never mind having to defend Gadreel and finding that the two of them are not only uniquely placed to fight Metatron but now are uniquely placed not to be trusted and that NOTHING they say will be trusted…

> HANNAH  
> Nothing you say matters.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Would you rather I not try at all?

Also that line from Cas is like… the most Cas thing.

* * *

Here’s Dean doing his walk to his doom. Aaaand here’s the line that sneakily confirms absolutely everything about Dean “Humanity” Winchester and the multiple layers at work about him representing that and what that MEANS for Cas and what Metatron’s plan was  _really_  about…

> WOMAN  
> You’re Dean Winchester. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Now, how did you know that? 
> 
> WOMAN  
> He said you were coming.

* * *

Dean carries on the walk to his doom. Through the shadows, back-lit, so not scary at ALL, passing through red light with a bar pattern that falls over his face… Yeah he’s fine.

  


* * *

Hannah’s words get to Gadreel about only thinking about himself. Cas calls him “friend” and Gadreel mentions the original mission, which I think is a bingo on “you’re about to die” :P

> GADREEL  
> The only thing that matters in the end is the mission – protecting those who would not and cannot protect themselves –the humans. None of us is bigger than that. And we will not let our fears, our self-absorption prevent us from seeing it through. Not anymore.

I love that he talks for all angels here though, once he puts aside his personal feelings, about wanting to redeem himself. It’s really dark – that he loses his sense of self and puts the “mission” first, for all angels. He wants to give Cas and Hannah a chance and of course next season go off just to round off rogue angels until Hannah belatedly has a realisation in 10x07. The Gadreel Memorial Rubble in 10x02 maybe helped a bit to remind them of his words.

(Also all this fuckery blurring Dean and Humanity gives Cas a pretty fair reason to ditch everything to do with ANGELS and try and help him after he finds out in 10x02, though of course it’s just framed as the Dean/Cas/Hannah love triangle there >.>)

* * *

Needless to say I am still distraught about Gadreel doing that :<

Not entirely sure what his plan was – to make a big gesture? Or to free Cas and assume he could take it from there? I mean it WORKS but how was he to know it would work? He had to guess Hannah could be talked around to believing and helping Cas…

Eh, plot convenience.

* * *

Metatron sitting with that lurid yellow line behind him. 

Literally like the sulphurous depths of Hell wait below them. And it’s a line that he’ll throw Dean across to kill him – the wall Dean will die against is right there behind him with its crosses. The line behind Metatron though, doesn’t have the bottom bar of the cross. He doesn’t get that framing despite going around casting himself as the messiah and getting followers to repeat it.

> DEAN  
> You can save the humble-pie Jesus routine for somebody who gives a damn.

Not on his watch :P

* * *

LOL and the red arrow in the background of Dean pointing down… 

And he’s all lit with yellow. I can’t get enough of this set. Or his face. Once you light it from below with yellow with all the aforementioned things that change his face already? He’s not Dean any more. He’s like a caged creature pacing threateningly back and forth in step with Metatron.

  


* * *

> METATRON   
> So I’m a fake. Do you have any idea how much pancake makeup and soft lighting it took to get God to work a rope line? He hated it.

There’s that insider knowledge on how God operated which makes Metatron’s admiration and MIMICKING of him so dark… I think something that just works better once you’ve seen 11x20 and feel at least a little sympathetic towards him or understand why he went so far off the rails. He says people can sense God hated all the effort of being God (and no wonder he left and gives us an early insight into God AVOIDING his responsibilities instead of being ~mysterious~) and Metatron is so bitter about that and about God leaving… 

Again, season 6 and Cas trying to be God (which Metatron reminded him of in 9x18 via Gabriel in an attempt at a friendly way) this intentionally parallels them, by Metatron’s doing, the burden of being God and all the hard work to pull it off… Cas for all the right reasons to the wrong ends, but Metatron just completely wrong >.> And that they do it because they’re bitter God left, because God doesn’t answer – his absence, leaving behind the tablets as the only guidance, is something from season 7-11 that shapes everything, and his absence is in every season from 4. Obviously it’s a thing in 12 in different ways, but basically since Cas said “because God commanded it” in 4x01 God’s actual absence and lack of comment has been powering everything…

* * *

> METATRON   
> And all the while, blaming themselves! “Oh, if only I’d been more prayerful, "God would have loved me! God would have saved me!” You know what?! God didn’t even know their name! But I do.

LOL Metatron projecting – he probably has a deep down fear he doesn’t even want to express about “just being the angel closest to the door” whose name didn’t matter. The entire time we’ve known him or known OF him he’s had pretensions of grandeur, of styling himself archangel or using the “scribe of god” title and acting like that gives him so much extra power and prestige. That God liked him best and he was special and chosen… God KNEW his name and asked for him by it, kind of thing.

* * *

> DEAN [starting to unwrap the First Blade in his hand]  
> I’m blaming you for Kevin! I’m blaming you for taking Cas’ Grace. Hell, I’m blaming you for the Cubs not winning The World Series in the last 100 freaking years. Whatever it is… I’m blaming you.

Oh yeah that was weird when the show killed off Metatron and then that happened. 

Anyway, Dean listens to all that blah about God and the universe and then brings it right down to the personal level, that Metatron has to be held accountable for Kevin, and what he did to Cas. The two things that have caused the most pain as far as Dean can see as personal injuries to his nearest and dearest – Sam just mentioned how Kevin still, uh, haunts him, and Dean is feeling bad about Cas just on principle without an obvious reminder. I think he is still worried after the reveal in 9x22, never mind the stress it caused him over the year with Cas being human and how much he failed him… Then he moves to blaming Metatron for the sorry state of the world in general, as if covering for Dean caring too much :P

Of course you could say he cares most about Kevin because he feels the responsibility of that, but then Cas is a random point of data between Kevin and baseball stats; how much does he mean? Dean has no guilt for it, but it DID happen to someone he cared about, and Metatron hasn’t caused THAT much personal injury to them, all in all, since he’s mostly dealt with Cas and run an angel war away from them. All very mysterious >.>

* * *

Metatron reacts to Dean pulling out the First Blade with a genuine little moment of consternation before he carries on trash talking. I think he knows that he has a danger that he COULD be killed with it if he fucks up, because if he’s masquerading as God, well, the Blade is shaking in Dean’s hand with anticipation and how much is Dean and how much is the Mark screeching for Metatron/God (if it can only sense his power, his power is mostly from the tablet, filled with God’s power that Metatron’s tapped into for himself)… 

He also knows that that power is enough that he IS stronger than Dean as he is… In 10x10 he’s got no cards left and is willing to let Dean kill him just to fuck him up and therefore really ruin Cas’s day too probably :P Here I don’t think he’d let that happen at all, and if Metatron had remained in power, season 10 would have been very different, because he would have been MUCH more motivated not to be God while a powerful unkillable demon was walking around pissed at him on a personal and cosmic level, so probably would have been gunning for Dean. Being in prison is weirdly quite a safe place to be, although in 10x02 didn’t he suggest he was ready to move to another planet and let them have this one? :P puts it in context how scared of Dean he is when he’s powerless…

* * *

Metatron looks so small and unassuming and Dean looks so huge and menacing. Not quite as huge as Gadreel-in-Sam standing next to Metatron in that one scene where it’s hilariously different sizes, but still :P

He manages to land a solid punch, after Metatron tells him Cas is locked up and Dean’s all alone with no help coming. (He walked in here after punching Sam out cold but was still relying on Cas, and you can see that on his face when Metatron calls him out that he really was stalling and hoping >.>)

Metatron then implies he has a “big blade” with about the same sort of innuendo as he talked about Cas having the bigger army last episode :D

Metatron throws him over the yellow line, and doesn’t let him back past… This fight is too fast for there to be a full 8x17 parallel, actually, although it does start with Dean getting thrown, and then Metatron punches him in the face a lot. I guess I thought that was always the style of these fights where they get overwhelmed, since Swan Song goes that way too, but this is very obviously not relying on the “breaking through the punching” thing to work that way because what does Metatron care about not hurting Dean? but playing off Cas in Metatron’s office struggling to break the connection… So yeah, we’re a step down the road from 8x17, not Swan Song.

This is cut with flashes to the office in Heaven and with Sam hurrying on his way to… idk shoot Metatron? He has NO plan. Why do the Winchesters run towards death etc.

Dean reaches for the blade and Cas sees the typewriter in the same second of back and forth moments – their two desires at the moment put side by side… Dean doesn’t get to stab Metatron and Cas gets there too late and loses Dean too.

* * *

Oh that always hurts to watch.

Also Metatron twisting the knife.

* * *

Looking at how squarely in the chest Dean was stabbed, that SHOULD have killed him then and there, and I reckon he does kinda die at the moment the tablet shatters (was I pointlessly keeping count to ramble about it each time he did it? That’s 3/3 for Cas breaking the word of God :P) because it’s just so SYMBOLIC of everything shattering and Metatron’s story ending. Metatron should have realised it was all over then, despite trying to have a go at Cas anyway, because he was off-script, and the regular rules are back in play for him, including dramatic irony now chasing after him catching up after he wrote his way around it for a year. :P

* * *

Oh yeah and that great rumble of thunder comes when Dean opens his eyes again (Mittens was talking about how killing Cain had a great rumble of cosmic thunder) – it’s got a time delay from the tablet breaking and maybe that’s just the distance the thunder had to travel from Heaven, but I think Dean reviving because the Mark won’t let him die is much more likely because it ALWAYS bugged me how long it took him to “die” here and that Sam had him up and walking. Not with how squarely Metatron stabbed him in the chest.

* * *

Kinda horrible seeing Sam rushing in to tend to Dean just ignoring the murderous angel standing right there… >.> Oh Sam.

* * *

I do wonder about Cas sitting in Metatron’s chair because he has the broadcast on… Maybe since he is kinda ill at the moment, he just sat down to recover from all the stress. But, no, I wonder if it’s a strategy thing, to make Metatron not look that direction, but also to put himself in the seat, like, I won, the way Lucifer keeps plonking himself in Crowley’s chair or something. Rile him up to be even more annoyed and baited into perjuring himself. (Oh this is such a fantasy that leaders can be brought down by saying things which obviously show they’re evil and incompetent for all to hear.)

But Metatron doesn’t melt down, he comes at Cas all confidence, because he knows something Cas doesn’t, winning cards to put on the table…

> METATRON  
> Ah. So Gadreel bites the dust. And the Angel tablet – arguably the most powerful instrument in the history of the universe – is in pieces, and for what again? Oh, that’s right – to save Dean Winchester. That was your goal, right? I mean, you draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but ultimately, it was all about saving one human, right? Well, guess what. He’s dead, too.

At least in the emotional war, the battle is won but Metatron won the war. In the Angel war, Metatron wins this little battle of the personal pissing contest but the war is won in Cas’s favour.

Anyway is there even any point in doing more than flailing in the direction of those lines after turning them inside out about what they all mean in context of all the stuff building up to them? Cas’s emotional arc is revealed here – his true weakness.

Loving humanity is DANGEROUS yes, we’ve seen 2 angels in a row make a stand for the mission and die. But it’s not on the same scale as what Cas’s “weakness” is – it’s always “the Winchesters” this and “Dean” that… 12x10 expressly says his “human weakness” and links it to Dean, a couple of episodes before Cas’s love confession. As I said, season 12 picking up where season 9 left off. And Cas finally returning to deal with all this; breaking the Word of God in favour of Dean. A clear message about picking “humanity” over angels and Heaven. Of picking Dean over his duty or even the same original mission that Gadreel just died for. You could say Metatron is just taunting him, but Cas’s loyalty was demonstrated to be to Dean not Heaven JUST last episode and it’s impossible not to see these two things fit together like jigsaw pieces where only we and Metatron know everything. Cas has no idea that Metatron identified his weakness as being in love (with humanity) or that he’s now changed his evaluation of Cas to make it deadly personal about Dean…

But we do :3

[oops, either I have a fucked up gifset somewhere or that’s a reject gif I found on the workbench :P]

* * *

Cas can’t even look at Metatron when he says “it was all about saving one human”

* * *

I also love Metatron’s reaction to Gadreel’s death, because Gadreel was his main character until he betrayed him – the tablet being broken, the story is over… But his story was failing before Cas even did that because his characters surprised him – by not wanting to go where “the story” took them.

* * *

Also, the speech starting with Gadreel’s death and ending in Dean’s – almost like Metatron IS still weaving the story, making things real by saying them… The last parallel between Dean and Gadreel, again tying their journeys and characters together…

>   
> DEAN [weakly]  
> Sammy, you got to get out of here before he comes back.

I wonder if he knows he’s turning – he says the Mark’s making him into something he doesn’t want to be. Does he know how literal that is? I mean, probably not, but it’s all really ominous that Sam needs to get away and leave Dean. Sam can’t leave Dean – he hauls him all the way back to the Bunker, and just makes everything that much worse for himself.

* * *

Anyway Sam in desperate bargaining mode, having had every single thing kicked out from underneath him since season 8, and in season 9 discovered there were NEW things to kick out from under him.

I think one of the things about Carver era is it wants to explore all this darkness and co-dependency but it has to drive Sam to impossibly hard places before it’s his turn for it, and to torment and trick Dean into all sorts of terrible choices, e.g. trusting Gadreel was a terrible idea and a bad thing to do but the blackmail from Gadreel that endangered Sam’s life came AFTER, yanking control from Dean and tricking him, even if that doesn’t absolve him of the choice, it’s like it escalated 10 steps after Dean took 1. It’s like Metatron and his convoluted stories and set ups, dragging the characters to these places so the stories can be told about them.

I think there IS a natural progression from Sam at the start of season 8 to Sam in 8x23 or from there to here, but the point is they put in so much WORK to grind him down and ruin him and Dean and their relationship (for example using the Mark to accelerate a descent for Dean along with then changing his behaviour), that it’s sort of forcing a situation where it’s exploring things which seem to be deep dark truths about their relationship and how it’s awful and needs to be addressed so they stop sacrificing for each other and doing silly things like releasing the Darkness… but it’s all a shade too manufactured (I mean, the Darkness came out of nowhere as a big escalation from an already bad decision Sam had already made but then it got 10x worse).

And not in the big scale even but the smaller things that add up, like the OTT reactions to lying and betrayal at the start of season 8 or the season long grudge and disowning etc this year. The end of season 10 with Sam frantically telling Cas how much worse Dean has got over and over almost in defiance of how Dean seems to be sort of okay, working himself into such a panic he’ll use the Book of the Damned (and not even ask Rowena nicely but put her in chains to do it for him). After any big thing you can be like, how did we get here, and look back, and the progression is full of things which sort of make you pull a face at how they were pulled off but the overall picture is thematically sound and you know what they’re angling at.

Heck, I AGREE that the co-dependency was a bad thing, but it had been dormant for years when Carver came back, having missed all of Gamble era, so he resurrected it as the thing he wanted to address (the last episode he wrote being 5x18 where Adam takes the brunt of their making huge choices for each other thing and it being heavily romanticised and I think the episode where Zach says they’re codependent and it actually sounds critical in that way where you question if he has a point especially as Adam did pay for it, and THAT was what Carver went and stewed on for 2 years out of the fold… I think I mused on this from the other direction back in the 5x18 rewatch) So the fact it’s not romanticised and is used as the motivating Bad Thing in Carver era which needs to be resolved, still means it needs to go through a couple of rounds of awful to build up and be arguably bad enough to then try and fix. Throw in the plot accordion and Carver losing interest and wandering off before it was done, and… Yeah.

Basically I totally sympathise with Sam in the position he’s in but that doesn’t mean I like the bigger picture very much, now this is setting him up for his season 10 stuff, where he has to bear being the Winchester in the wrong,  _ethically_ , even if emotionally he just wants to save his brother and for a vast number of reasons is kind of forced into it.

And then when we get to the big big picture of what was Carver era all about, I DO agree… 11x23 wrapped it up nicely, although it all flowed into DABB’s approach to everything and his choices and approach to cleaning this all up. (And I mean obviously he didn’t solve the co-dependency but he’s now brought it all down to a level where you can work with it – smaller choices and smaller consequences which affect the world in different ways…)

* * *

> SAM  
> Don’t worry about the Mark. We’ll figure out the Mark later. Just hold on, okay? Get you some help.

Sam. How many times have I told you to worry about the Mark first?

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> You will never get away with this.

Cas using clichéd lines from the movies that usually trick the villain into confessing

* * *

> CASTIEL  
> You give our brothers and sisters far too little credit. They will soon learn that you have been playing them.

I hope the other angels can hear Cas too. Maybe this is why they give him another big chance to be free and work with them after this

* * *

> METATRON  
> And then? They will do nothing because they are frightened little sheep following my crook wherever it leads. And where I’m taking them, back to our rightful place atop this mountain of human shame and excrement – when that happens, trust me, they’re not gonna care how they got there.

Lol foot in mouth.

Also disrespecting humans – Metatron doesn’t learn, while all the good angels are concerned about the original mission (Gadreel, Scarf Angel, Cas and now Hannah) and anyway, the blatant disrespect for humans AND angels shows he’s not fit to be a leader.

* * *

> DEAN  
> What happened with you being okay with this? 
> 
> SAM  
> I lied. 
> 
> DEAN  
> Ain’t that a bitch?

I just had a long conversation with Mittens pretty much unrelated to this about Sam and Dean and lying and how that’s changing over time, or not. I think season 9 really did give Dean a problem with lying – whether he was doing it or being lied TO, all his issues come from the deception at the start. In season 12 he’s being positioned as the character being constantly lied to and he wants to tell the truth or thinking lying sucks; generally back to Dean as the moral compass. 

He lies professionally – and even that was challenged in 12x11 with the peek behind performing Dean – but I think in emotional situations, Dean has made a LOT of progress towards telling the truth or reaching out to people (started in his character development season in season 10), along with how he has a lot of perspective on how much lying sucks both for those holding up a lie (he was SO bad at it during the Gadreel possession because he didn’t WANT to lie which I think is much better perspective than lying and getting away with it and not suffering until it’s found out) and being lied to. Sam, though, may not like being lied to (who does) but hasn’t sort of internalised the problem with being the one lying, especially when it’s both a useful tool day to day, but also he can lie to himself about a ton of stuff to get through the day, and is so successful with self-deceiving lies or covering up his feelings in a major way.

I think in these 2 words it’s the really big emotional confession from Sam at the end of the season – same as 8x23 then makes you go back and evaluate Sam all season looking for the root of all that, I’ve had to talk about Sam all through this season knowing he knows that in his heart he probably would do the same for Dean but he was lashing out in the fight and sticking his ground and I think (badly) trying to make the point that it was a really bad thing to do, to keep sacrificing for each other and doing terrible things to keep each other alive. Obviously he has a point, but then because he’s lying he’s not addressing the core issue, which is that this applies to him just as much. Revealing this to Dean then becomes validating to Dean that his actions weren’t so far off base and the principles that Sam was pissed on the behalf of maybe aren’t so important, and so on. To come to a place of truly healing they need NOT to lie and keep things from each other.

(So season 12’s staged reasons to lie to each other, the fact Sam even admits a portion of what he was keeping secret within an episode is a good start. He’s STILL holding back the stuff that in this context would be “I lied” – that is, the important details about what the BMoL are doing and have done so far. Dean hasn’t heard the world without monsters sales pitch, really, not in a meaningful way; he just knows that they’re basically taking over the spot Bobby used to have for example, of dishing out cases to hunters. Working with vs believing in or something. Idk.

I should stop talking about season 12 but honestly I process it through writing about old seasons… I swear I didn’t do a single rewatch during season 11 where I wasn’t dragging in later canon >.>

* * *

Anywho. Metatron and Cas. Much more melodramatic :P

> METATRON  
> You know, why you could never quite pull it together, Castiel, while you’re sitting here with Your Grace slowly burning away and your reputation long extinguished? No curiosity. You didn’t read enough. You never learned how to tell a good story.
> 
> CASTIEL [looking straight at METATRON]  
> But you did.

Honestly that line seems to refer both to Metatron blabbing everything, and Metatron giving Cas aaall the tools here – I think this is an extension of his “wookie” plan, learning these tricks through stories. At the time of airing I’m pretty sure people came up with several plots foiled in such a way… If nothing else it seems very much like a silly comedy thing where the cartoonish villain accidentally is on loudspeaker and the stakes are only like, say, reputation at school or workplace or something. Tricking confessions onto recording devices rather than broadcasts is also a very common trope in slightly more serious fiction. Anyway because he learned all this about stories and then gave them to Cas, he manufactured his own downfall, through storytelling. Of course. 

And his lack of respect for Cas as a PROTAGONIST not an antagonist. “I didn’t think he’d  be good at it!” Metatron protests, underestimating that the story will support CAS.

Also suggesting he may be wrong in his assessment of Cas here.

The pause after “no curiosity” is also interesting because it gives a good long time to wonder what Cas wasn’t curious about. He has been following his duty quite consistently. It’s why he failed at Metatron’s “find a wife” command among other (gay) reasons. It’s not that he wasn’t doing well at being human, it’s that bigger problems like… Metatron forced him back into the game (also… other reasons. Like helping Dean >.>) so it wasn’t that he was NOT curious about living a human life and slowly starting to pick up human customs (the start of 9x06 shows him curious and mimicking humans at work), he just didn’t have time for it. Anyway. Double meaning on “curious” because of gay stuff. Cas doesn’t actually get blatantly queercoded all that often in comparison to Dean when it comes to language and implications around him, but this season has the bulk of it. Generally he just sort of gets on with things while being Cas.

Would Cas have done better if he’d taken advantage of being human and exercised some curiosity and made out with Dean?

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

* * *

Where did Cas learn to get out of handcuffs like that?

* * *

She says, not wanting to even contemplate talking about the tears in Cas’s eyes when he sees Metatron’s angel blade all covered in Dean’s blood.

* * *

I mean talk about symbolic if they had both been stabbed through the heart with it

* * *

Also Cas is metaphorically stabbed through the heart with it anyway, seeing that, bye

* * *

Meanwhile: Dean busy dying. Like, super dead. Bye bye.

* * *

(He’ll be fine, oh my god, Sam, stop with the ugly crying)

* * *

I mean I’m torn, obviously this is all really emotional but on the other hand he literally is dead for less than 5 minutes screentime. I feel horrible for Sam, who thinks Dean is dead until a quarter of the way through 10x01 (or Cas who doesn’t know until the start of 10x02) but on the other hand as the audience this is a huge sad set up which is then yanked away with horror, not grief, at what’s become of Dean. And Sam, sadly, is in this place where his reactions are much more tinged with irony than Cas’s are, because of the “I lied” thing coming right before Dean’s death. Dean briefly reasserts his normal self to say some sad words about being proud of them and to die good, you know, the last part of his personality that exists before it’s all gone for a while, so we see Dean’s symbolic death of Self after that… Sam has just let this all spin from between his fingers while fighting with Dean and not seeing how bad it was getting… I mean even now he seems to think the worst problem is that Dean was stabbed by Metatron. Dean’s already died of that and come back :P Now his soul is getting all munched up with the effort of keeping him alive, and he’s probably more like, blacked out while passing between states or something.

Anyway Sam saying he lied and Dean’s “ain’t that a bitch” show how the entire conflict that brought them there has been undermined by these actions, for it to all swing around to next season, of Sam steering the latest round of saving each other and bad decisions, presented as a moral decline (to limited success as Buckleming had to deliver the big staged moment, like, for our contemplation on the subject, immediately followed by the formula curse shelving everything to get back to normal in time for the 200th).

So I’ve always struggled with Sam’s grief here because his sadness is very real but it’s always been clear that this swing around was coming and that Sam would have to be the one making bad decisions about what to do about Dean – his next thing is attempting to summon Crowley, showing he’d be exactly where Dean was, as 9x01 and 9x23 mirror each other with a Winchester laid out seemingly dead/dying in bed, and the other bargaining for their life. And in Sam’s case it’s not pure grief motivating it because of everything that was built up – the obligation since 8x01 that they save each other all the time and their rule about not doing that was something they knew they ignored anyway:

> DEAN  
> After you looked for me. [SAM says nothing.] Did you look for me, Sam? [SAM looks away.] Good. That’s good. Now, we – we… always told each other  _not_  to look for each other. That’s smart. Good for you. Of course, we always ignored that because of our deep, abiding love for each another, but not this time, right, Sammy?

So Sam’s got a double obligation of failing Dean’s standards last time, owing him one for saving him in 9x01 and having just stated that his stance on the argument about its moral failings was a lie… Like, I don’t wanna judge Sam because obviously Dean’s part in this has very much been beating him into shape to make these choices and Sam’s in a “did what I had to do” lack of choice when it seems like you could choose to just let it go and NOT go down a bad path. It’s a tragedy and they’re both messed up by it.

Still, actually watching Sam sob all over Dean while knowing he’s gonna make terrible choices is harder to watch than Cas on the verge of tears after an entirely blameless season where he’s been shoved around this way and that and only ever tried to help his two families and/or acted out of love for Dean in a pretty pure, unproblematic way.

I don’t really like Carver era Sam. He’s all puppy dog eyes about doing things I seriously don’t agree with. Dean being all conflicted and angsty while doing things I seriously don’t agree with at least makes me feel like Dean feels horrible about it which makes it easier for me to sympathise even while he does immensely silly things, because he seems to know they are too :P

*raises a glass to Sam and his terrible decisions in season 12 which has been making me cheer for Sam being a total badass all the while and I’m totally and utterly turning into a Sam!girl while he’s making all his terrible decisions so clearly it is not about them making terrible decisions but how it comes across when they do*

* * *

> HANNAH  
> You’re doing the right thing – letting him live.

That’s an abrupt turn around on punishing Dean :P I think she’s realised a lot about Cas and his compassion – she IS learning from him all the time because she admires him (except for in 9x22 briefly when Metatron turns them against him), so I think she’s now rationalising that Cas is trying not to kill people all the time as a good sign of his leadership. I mean, which this is, and I would barely comment if not for how literally last episode she was making him kill Dean over a much smaller thing than Metatron’s crimes. Cas thinking differently from the other angels, making compassionate decisions – yeah, that makes him stand out. The fact he wouldn’t kill Dean SEEMED huge to her, but now she sees he won’t kill even his NEMESIS.

The impact of not killing Dean on a personal level maybe is watered down in Hannah’s estimation for a lil while until she has to give him a pep talk about getting distracted in 10x03 :P I think for us, the fact these things are compared means less because it’s coming from Hannah’s direction. Metatron was also mobbed by angels, paralleling how he incited the mob of humans to kill; Cas in charge now is like, NO don’t do that, that’s barbaric. He chose a better way, that NO more angels die, and he means it. That may be the main contrast here.

* * *

> HANNAH  
> It’s what a leader would do.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> I’m no leader, Hannah. I never was. I just want to be an angel.
> 
> HANNAH  
> And Your Grace? What will you do about that? You will die if you don’t replenish it.

Oh Cas :<

So there’s his “don’t want to be a leader” thing again, on the OTHER side of Metatron. Hannah’s season is telling Cas he should be a leader, getting him to be a leader briefly, abandoning him as a leader, and once again following him and seeing him AS a leader, and like 9x18 when they first meet, Cas has to tell her he’s not a leader. Though he might seem like the obvious choice and the angel with the most – wait a minute :P

Lizzy says, having been typing this whole paragraph thinking about Kelvin and his speech about Cas having more experience than the next 1000 angels combined and so on. As I said, season 12 picking up where season 9 left off.

Cas says he doesn’t want to be a leader and he just wants to be an angel. After being challenged all season about what he wants to be – to live or die, angel or man, earth or heaven, us or them, etc etc, he seems to make a choice; this scene transitions via music that starts over Cas’s anguished face to all these questions, to Dean being dead. He and Cas are linked still, with their dying and fading away, Dean with his humanity, Cas with his grace. Thematically intertwined even when they’re at this point about as far from each other as it’s possible to be.

I think it’s very important Cas ends this season in Heaven saying he wants to be an angel, even if he’s back on Earth (mourning Dean while naked - nope not over it) when we next see him. At this point it seems like all his ties to Earth are gone (well, Sam is still alive, but come on, he loves Sam but DEAN is the much bigger motivator for where Cas goes and stays)… With nothing left to keep him, Cas seems to declare a side, or at least, a wish for a side. Being a simple, uncomplicated angel with someone to tell him what to do, because now he’s going to be forced into like, 2 years of self-reflection to help make this choice clearer. Heaven means a lot to him. It’s his family. When they care, they want him there.

But Cas doesn’t have a sense of belonging with them. He  _just wants_  to be an angel. Implying he isn’t, that he’s offset from that, that he already doesn’t belong. And belonging is the keyword because when this arc picks up again in 12x03, it’s Mary asking Cas about belonging, and he’s not sure he does belong or not. By 12x12 he is ready to declare who his family is and that he loves them. Something I don’t think he could say here about them… not because he didn’t feel it but because it was TOO far away and seemingly lost or unattainable, or something Cas couldn’t imagine for himself. At least the years of self-reflection allow Cas a lot more time to ruminate on all this.

I think his decision is coming and in a way 12x15 had to drag him back to this exact point but on the other side of all of that: bringing him back to Heaven and facing him with actually contemplating how he fits in and how he belongs – and what Heaven means to him and how he might be able to make peace with them. And it’s no longer vague or implied about who he considers family and how he feels about them, so that’s good. It’s answering THIS moment where Cas doesn’t really know anything, can barely express it except in a wish that he was  _just_  an angel, and if he can barely commit to Heaven, he has lost a huge tether to being human or even sharing in Dean’s human life and picking earth even as an angel still.

(I mean I do think this season by having Cas be human, teases in a huge way that this might be a path he takes willingly. But that’s even more abstract from where we are now because first he has to deal with Heaven and find a way to come to a comfortable place to be able to choose his human family… Before he could ever consider being human WITH them. But this DOES mean it’s on the table as an endgame for him since it’s a path offered to him)

* * *

Anyway Sam drops Dean on the wrong side of the bed, and goes to drink and be miserable about things. Sam drinking is neeever a good sign.

* * *

Last time to enjoy his hair looking even halfway normal for a year.

* * *

Oh no there’s blood on the rusty bacon shirt. I can imagine Dean not wearing that shirt he died in ever again because it’s soaked in blood and probably has a hole through the back. But Sam keeps on wearing this shirt, and ARGH. :P

* * *

> SAM  
> Damn it, Crowley. You got him into this mess. You will get him out… or so help me, God.

LOL then God ends up helping

I don’t know if Sam was entirely intending to make a deal, or just feeling reckless enough that he might threaten Crowley into helping (i.e. like he did with Rowena next season) … either way, not a good path to go down, and you can definitely see his summoning Crowley as letting him in to completely ignore appearing for him, but going straight to Dean instead. After all… he is saving Dean from being  _dead_ …

That one shot of him doing the summoning for Crowley was enough to stoke hope that we’d get witch!Sam over the hiatus since the last thing we see him doing is a summoning.

Basically I’d say we should stop speculating for witch!Sam after being burned so many times but it’s so much fun. And this was one of the few times we knew he was going dark and so could plausibly indulge in a little magic. Except then Rowena came along and instead of teaching him he made her do all the work. Close enough >.>

* * *

He’s aligned with Rowena but here’s Crowley looking over Dean lying on the bed. Dean’s hand is already clenched a little as if around the Blade. Crowley is looking over his work, and lurks in the doorway… The next shot, of course, of him coming into the room still in shadow. An image we see a lot in the next couple of episodes, with Sam moping into this room, and then demon!Dean and Sam both coming by during the chase. But the bookend to this is the very similar staging of Dean alive and well and cured, when Cas drops by, again standing in the doorway, framed across Dean’s bed, and being used as the conversation to tie off all the ends, to show that most things are right again, until Cas leaves… Of course, need I say it, also doing a tremendous amount for the Cas/Dean/Crowley love triangle, as it shows Cas has won him back.

But now, Crowley comes to claim him:

> CROWLEY  
> Your brother, bless his soul, is summoning me as I speak. Make a deal, bring you back. It’s exactly what I was talking about, isn’t it? It’s all become so… expected. You have to believe me. When I suggested you take on the Mark of Cain, I didn’t know this was going to happen. Not really. I mean, I might not have told you the entire truth. But I never lied. I never lied, Dean. That’s important. It’s fundamental. But…there is one story about Cain that I might have… forgotten to tell you. Apparently, he, too, was willing to accept death, rather than becoming the killer the Mark wanted him to be. So he took his own life with the Blade. He died. Except, as rumor has it, the Mark never quite let go. You can understand why I never spoke of this. Why set hearts aflutter at mere speculation? It wasn’t until you summoned me… No, it wasn’t truly until you left that cheeseburger uneaten…that I began to let myself believe. Maybe miracles do come true.
> 
> [CROWLEY moves to the bed and places the First Blade into DEAN’s right hand and lays them both on DEAN’s chest.]
> 
> Listen to me, Dean Winchester, what you’re feeling right now – it’s not death. It’s life – a new kind of life. Open your eyes, Dean. See what I see. Feel what I feel. And let’s go take a howl at that moon.

I love how this is cut with shots of Dean’s dead face like he’s got some part in the conversation. In a messed up way it reminds me 8x16, Dean’s prayer in this same room, where the silences and changes in camera angle implied Cas was listening and watching but not answering. I feel like I should make a comment about how only Jensen Ackles can have emotive reaction shots while playing DEAD.

Anyway, now Crowley calls out how boring the cycle of Winchesters saving each other is, once more as a final thought. Like, yeah, they need to change, but this is  _probably not how to do it healthily_ :P Though from a writing POV (and Crowley, more than Metatron, actually is the genre savvy character calling this stuff out) it’s like, at least it’s acknowledging that after 9 years certain cycles don’t work anymore. I still think season 6 & 7 are just way too clean of all this sort of specific melodrama so Carver had to conjure it all up anyway, but oh well. :P We’re here now.

Crowley goes on to explain that he hasn’t lied, which obviously parallels to how Sam admits he had lied, so despite Dean’s overall assessment of being proud of them, their fight just resolved with “well ain’t that a bitch” and basically, Dean only NOT being pissy about all that because he was too busy dying which really gives some context on a situation :P But if he’s going to come back, Crowley can now position himself as the one who DOESN’T lie to Dean so the one who should be trusted. He meanders around the truth a bit, but saying that it’s “fundamental” emphasises Crowley’s integrity. Which Dean has reason to believe in despite everything, because of the times Crowley has helped them in the past or stood up for Hell’s integrity, and the natural order. Dean is now aligning himself with the natural order and the way Hell works seems much simpler and plainer to him. Hell’s like a Swiss watch etc. Dean already shows that he gets it?

Then Crowley comes clean with the rumours he (and possibly Cas) knew about Cain and how he came to be a demon. Which implies where Dean’s self-destruction and last moment of clarity after getting stabbed about “it’s better this way” come from. Even, perhaps, Dean’s entire suicidal run at Metatron. Dean overwhelmed with the same thing.

The important phrasing here is “becoming the killer the Mark wanted him to be” because it’s nature vs nurture – the Mark MAKING them into it, vs unlocking some darkness inside them. Word choice deliberate. (every time I say “dark” it is, really :P) The darkness is pushed on them. The Mark not wanting to let go? That’s it having its own will because it’s an outside thing with its own hungers and own tiny bit of consciousness as a way Amara is able to lash out at Creation…

Crowley mentions miracles, finally revealing what the title is  _really_  about. Crowley’s definition of miracles. He believed in this. He’s been hoping for one all year it feels like. All his hard work setting it up, and he just has to lurk around the fight, collect the blade, follow them back to the Bunker and see if his gamble paid off and he got his miracle.

Anyway I completely coincidentally watched 8x04 within the last few days and the fact that’s got a “see what I see, feel what I feel”-ish line has me on the side-eyeing everyone borrowing everything from Robbie train again. Especially as the MotW in that part of season 8 set up literally  _everything_ from season 9, 10 and 11. Like, just that little cluster of episodes are thematically dense and only get denser. Now Carver era has finished, rewatching 8x03-8x06 is kind of hilarious.

* * *

Anyway happy last moment of not realising Drowley was gonna be an actual thing, past!me! The fact this season literally ends on their elopement and Crowley winning Dean over was like… “it’s just subtextual coding” over the summer and lots of clever analysis from the fandom about how suggestive it all was… Ah, simpler times :P Dean’s world is all about to change. I guess the true victim of this season was Dean’s desperate attempts to convince himself of his heterosexuality.

* * *

Well played, Crowley.


End file.
